Massive Infrastructure Investment Plans

Total global mega‐project spending is already assessed at USD 6‐9 trillion annually, or 8% of total global GDP, which denotes the biggest investment boom in human history. The justification for augmenting this boom is to boost global economic growth rates by 2.1% and create jobs. The competition between and among traditional and emerging global powers for resources and markets is exerting downward pressure on norms, safeguards, and wages. Meanwhile, project preparation facilities are creating "pipelines of bankable projects" in each geographical region that rely heavily on fossil fuels and big dams. While the UN is creating goals for humanity to be in alignment with the earth (Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and national targets in UNFCCC COP21 negotiations), the G20 and competing development finance institutions are setting processes in motion that could make a farce of these goals and targets.

 

The post‐WWII development model is now defunct. The new model of investment emphasizes the use of public‐private partnerships (PPPs), new project preparation facilities, new forms of investor risk protection, and financialization. The G20, the UN Secretary General and the President of the World Bank have all expressed the desire to unlock access to some $84 trillion in long‐term institutional investment (e.g., pension funds, insurance funds, sovereign wealth funds). Access to long‐term institutional investment is seen as the MAGIC BULLET to boost global growth, create jobs, and provide infrastructure services. Yet this could lead to socialization of risk and privatization of gains on an unimaginable scale, thus leading to exploding levels of already‐severe inequality, on the one hand, and sovereign debt, on the other. The Challenge to Civil Society: Over the decades, civil society strategies have tended to focus on single institutions or single sectors (e.g., energy, water, health care, forestry, agriculture) or single mechanisms, such as safeguards, to protect the interests and legal rights of people and the earth. To some extent, we work in silos. What strategies could civil society employ to confront this effectively? What research/analysis is still needed?