Cities and Infrastructure
Transition in China

Sustainable infrastructure is essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations and enabling infrastructure to support the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Standards can play a role in making infrastructure more sustainable, by encouraging best practices and helping investors or policy makers evaluate whether new or existing projects are sustainable. Yet the complexity and variety of existing sustainability standards for infrastructure make it difficult for stakeholders to determine which standards to apply or compare standards when evaluating different projects against one another. Key infrastructure stakeholders—namely infrastructure financiers, infrastructure project developers, public officials involved in planning or funding infrastructure, and other funding organizations—have expressed the need for a report that could further investigate the sustainability standards landscape, compare existing standards utilizing the same fundamental approach, and highlight conclusions on their applicability in various stages of project development.