Built infrastructure is essential. Muller, et al, 2015. Review

Berkeley, Tuesday, October 23, 2018 5:00 PM

Annotations from Muller, M., Biswas, A., Martin-Hurtado, R. & Tortajada, C. 2015, “Built infrastructure is essential”, Science, vol. 349, no. 6248, pp. 585-586.

Muller et al (2015) interestingly challenged promoted benefits North to South of green-infrastructure in fast developing countries, for water and energy development, in contrast to pragmatic effects that conventional built gray water infrastructure can provide.

The authors stated that “China’s Three Gorges Dam symbolizes the infrastructure required to sustain prosperous large societies in the 21st century. It had social and environmental costs but protects millions of people from floods; supports economic development through improved inland navigation; and generates more emission-free electricity than most European countries. It also helps to integrate wind and solar power into China’s electric grids, building resilience while mitigating climate change.”

The debate is broader than this statement, however, is it good to remind that we also eat freshwater food from the rivers, and sediments are important that arrive to the delta. The last part cost large amount of money in maintenance at the site points, and in transport of sediment to maintain infrastructure downstream or bring it to the deltas.

Let’s put some economic numbers, and assess the fish environment to be able to assess if building gray infrastructure should be the better way to go for providing utilities to the 9.6 billion of people by 2050.

References

Muller, M., Biswas, A., Martin-Hurtado, R. & Tortajada, C. 2015, “Built infrastructure is essential”, Science, vol. 349, no. 6248, pp. 585-586.