Octobre 2025
Banque Interaméricaine de Développement (168 pages).
Latin America and the Caribbean face weather variations and natural disasters that increasingly disrupt transport, energy, water, and sanitation services and disproportionately harm the most vulnerable populations. This volume, From Risk to Reliability: Resilient Infrastructure Services to Face Nature's Challenges, offers a comprehensive framework for action to invest better, not just more, in resilient infrastructure.
Resilience refers to the ability of infrastructure systems to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and quickly recover from shocks, while learning over time. It is not indestructibility but an adaptive approach that weighs social costs and benefits under uncertainty to reduce risk, protect the continuity and quality of service, and speed recovery.
The report diagnoses the risks and vulnerabilities that infrastructure systems face in the region. It shows how gradual climatic changes (rising temperatures and sea levels), extreme weather events (such as droughts, storms, and floods), and geophysical disasters (such as earthquakes) affect both the demand and supply of infrastructure services. Beyond asset damage, disruptions to service provision generate cascading effects on households, firms, and the broader economy. The report then reviews the policy and technical toolkit available to embed resilience across planning, design, operation, and maintenance, including discussions on the need for updated standards, risk-based prioritization, adaptive planning, network diversification, and redundancy. It also covers the role of nature-based solutions and demand-side adaptation measures. Finally, the report examines the funding and financing mechanisms needed to close the resilience investment gap, calling for innovation on both fronts. It underscores the importance of robust enabling environments to attract and sustain investment at scale. However, unlocking the full potential of resilient infrastructure requires not only mobilizing more capital but also aligning funding structures with the unique characteristics of resilience investments.
These three dimensions are interdependent: effective resilience integrates robust risk assessment, adaptive planning, and innovative finance, supported by capable institutions, cross-sector coordination, and evidence-based policymaking. The stakes are high, but the payoff is clear: investing in resilience lowers lifecycle costs, safeguards service continuity, and opens new opportunities, especially for the most vulnerable. The report provides a technically grounded, actionable path to move from risk to reliability while setting a focused research agenda to close remaining evidence gaps.
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