Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation 

Sustainable industry, innovation, and infrastructure are paramount to living in harmony with nature and improving health and education outcomes globally. Some 2.3 billion people lack access to basic sanitation, while 2.6 billion have unreliable access to electricity. 

Goal 9 and the environment 

Infrastructure – including buildings and transportation – is crucial to economic development but currently poses serious risks to human and environmental health. In the race to advance development, industry and infrastructure are often unsustainable, aggravating the triple planetary crisis and leading to direct and indirect long-term economic losses.  

With rapid urbanization and an ever-growing global population, humanity must initiate multiple major transformations simultaneously to achieve environmental targets, including the Paris Agreement. Yet conflicts, including in Ukraine, and the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted inefficiencies across industry, innovation and infrastructure. Climate-related shocks and stressors undermine the stability of infrastructure systems and their ability to provide essential services, especially to the most vulnerable. 

Investing in climate-resilient infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries can save US$4.2 trillion worth of damages from climate impacts. Around 75 per cent of the infrastructure that will exist in 2050 has yet to be built, so humanity has a unique opportunity to improve building design, construction, retrofitting and operation. Only by doing this can we embrace low emissions, resource efficiency and resiliency to adapt to and overcome the triple planetary crisis.