The World Bank says low and middle-income countries need to invest in more resilient infrastructure to reap a net benefit on average of 4.2 trillion dollars.
It said this in a new report from the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) released in Washington D.C, yesterday.
The report also said that the countries would earn four dollars in benefit for each one dollar invested in infrastructure.
The report is titled; “Lifelines: The Resilient Infrastructure Opportunity” and it lays out a framework for understanding infrastructure resilience.
Infrastructure resilient is the ability of infrastructure systems to function and meet users’ needs during and after a natural hazard.
The report examined four essential infrastructure systems; power, water and sanitation, transport and telecommunications.
It said that making these infrastructure more resilient was critical, not only to avoid costly repairs but also to minimise the wide-ranging consequences of natural disasters for the livelihoods and well-being of people.
“Outages or disruptions to power, water, communication and transport affect the productivity of firms, the incomes and jobs they provide.
“It also directly impacts people’s quality of life, making it impossible for children to go to school or study and contributing to the spread of water-borne diseases like cholera.”
It also said that making them more resilient and better able to deliver the services people and firms need during and after natural shocks was critical.
“In low and middle-income countries, designs for more resilient assets in the power, water and sanitation and transport sectors would cost between 11 billion and 65 billion dollars a year by 2030, an incremental cost of around three per cent compared with overall investment needs.”