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Anthony Rowley

Heatwaves come and go, and while this is happening with increasing frequency and intensity – as this year’s record-breaking temperatures show – they slip from attention once things cool off. What does not disappear is the lasting and costly damage they do to the basic infrastructure we rely on in our daily lives.
Ultra-hot days and nights can result in the deaths of many people (those who cannot afford air conditioning especially) and they ignite forest infernos of terrifying intensity. Some of these make the news but what does not usually make headlines is the damage to roads, railways, bridges and other infrastructure.
Yet the cost is there, mounting more rapidly as each sweltering summer arrives – and it will have to be paid for by current and future generations. It is a cost that could eventually run into trillions of dollars.
Human-activity-induced climate change in general, and its manifestation in the form of stifling heat in particular, has been overshadowed by renewed wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, but the consequences mount with each fractional rise in summer temperatures and they cannot be ignored.
Some are taking notice. On July 15, Reuters reported on Europe’s race to protect infrastructure from heat as “railways buckle under record heat, roads melt and power grids strain”. A recently published book, Climate Change Effects on Infrastructure, examines how facilities are operating outside or at the limit of tolerance levels because they were built on assumptions that did not include climate change or extreme weather.
The problem is not, of course, confined to the European continent, and it is hardly a new one. As a report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) noted back in 2023, “Infrastructure financing and climate change are the most pressing issues facing Asia and the Pacific today.”


And as I observed in my 2020 book Foundations of the Future – the Global Battle for Infrastructure, “climate change threatens to wreak havoc on road, rail, river and power transmission systems through a dramatic rise in the incidence of flooding, hurricanes, rising sea levels and other manifestations of man-made damage”.
The book also cited Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that in the Asia-Pacific alone, the cost of insulating infrastructure from perceived environmental risks would amount to about US$4 trillion by 2030 while the cost of building the needed infrastructure would approach US$23 trillion, even without protective measures.
The problem has been getting far worse since then, as each passing year vies with previous ones to record ever higher summer temperatures. And, the cost of preventing or remedying the consequent damage to transport and other infrastructure just keeps rising.
Yet, instead of addressing the growing strain this is inflicting on national budgets, governments in Asia and beyond are focusing their attention on defence spending, goaded by the United States and Nato, the transatlantic security alliance, to do so in what looks suspiciously like a replay of Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” debacle of the 1980s.
just Asia’s problem but one of truly global dimensions, which merits the urgent attention of world leaders. Yet US President Donald Trump remains obsessed with Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin is fighting a war with Ukraine and China’s President Xi Jinping is beset with various challenges.


Worse, infrastructure has become a politicised issue – as with trade and investment – with efforts fragmented among multilateral institutions and regions as they compete for primacy and to satisfy the perceived wishes of their political masters.
This futile, though unacknowledged, rivalry among great powers began to emerge in the years immediately after Xi’s announcement in 2013 of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a continent-straddling infrastructure scheme to connect China, and Asia in general, with Europe and beyond via Central Asia. Instead of cooperating with this ambitious vision, the US, Japan, India, the European Union and others such as Australia, chose to launch rival schemes, most of which have yet to come to fruition.
Multilateral institutions such as the ADB, the World Bank, the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and others have been drawn into this rivalry, which has worked against the coordinated updating of global, or even regional, infrastructure investment needs, let alone the impact on design and costs of climate-proofing infrastructure. We will all pay a heavy cost for this failure unless it is addressed soon.

What are the benefits of climate-proofing infrastructure, apart from the obvious ones of preventing disastrous and hugely costly road collapses, rail accidents, flooding and fires?
World Bank studies cited in the ESCAP report suggest the cost of climate-proofing infrastructure can be offset by the economic benefits of avoiding damage from extreme weather events. Investing in climate resilience measures can improve the economic performance of infrastructure assets.
There is little point in relying on the private sector to finance, or even co-finance, the huge long-term investment required to build and climate-proof infrastructure. It is just too risky in the eyes of most asset managers, especially when juicy, shorter-term returns are available elsewhere. The state will need to step up and find ways to bolster revenue.


Hong Kong aims to raise zero-carbon energy share of fuel mix to 30% by 2030

Geologists find unexpectedly large water sources in Xinjiang beneath China’s largest desert

Hong Kong must prepare for the impact of heat-related work stoppages

Indonesians deliver oxygen to residents battling haze from worst wildfires in 11 years

Climate change

Who pays when overheated roads melt and rails buckle?

Melting asphalt, like this seen in India in the 2015 heatwave, is now increasingly common. Photo: EPA

The German fire department and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief gather on June 28 at Schanzenkopf, a nature reserve in the Bad Kreuznach district in western Germany where a wildfire has spread, leading to the evacuation of the entire municipality of Traisen. Photo: dpa

Asia’s ‘dangerous’ humid heatwaves push human body to its limits

Pedestrians use portable fans while walking on a street in Bangkok, Thailand, on Tuesday. Photo: Xinhua

People walk in a street in Hanoi, Vietnam, under scorching heat on Tuesday. Photo: EPA

Passengers wait at a bus stop equipped with water mist to provide relief from heat in Ahmedabad, India, on June 5. Photo: Reuters

A lion licks a block of ice in its enclosure at a zoo during a hot summer day in Lahore, Pakistan, on June 8. Photo: Reuters

Hot and bothered Europeans finally warm to air con

A woman shields her face with a fan in the Trocadero square near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on June 20, during a heatwave affecting a large part of France. Photo: Reuters

A shirtless man stands in front of a wall of air-conditioner units in Yau Tong in subtropical Hong Kong. Photo: Eugene Lee

Why the spectre of ‘climate black swan’ events is haunting global investors

A farmer harvests rice crop in a paddy field on the outskirts of Guwahati, India. Experts warn El Nino may disrupt the global rice market. Photo: AP/File photo

A farmer harvests rice crop in a paddy field on the outskirts of Guwahati, India. Experts are warning that rice production across South and Southeast Asia may be disrupted, with an El Nino developing later this year that could rank among the largest since records began. Photo: AP/File photo

To tackle the climate crisis, start small, think big and act at scale

A handout photo made available by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development shows a mountain range in Nepal, on March 21, 2010. Photo: EPA

A motorboat traverses the floodplain in the Amazon Rainforest on January 21, 2022. Photo: National Geographic 

Firefighters spray water to extinguish a fire in Kampar, Indonesia, on September 18, 2019. Photo: AP

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Costs are mounting from the damage caused by extreme weather on roads, railways, bridges and other basic infrastructure


Costs are mounting from the damage caused by extreme weather on roads, railways, bridges and other basic infrastructure.


Infrastructure

China and climate change

Climate change science and technology

Infrastructure in Asia

Belt and Road Initiative

Extreme weather

Macroscope

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

Who pays when overheated roads melt and rails buckle?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Costs are mounting from the damage caused by extreme weather on roads, railways, bridges and other basic infrastructure

Costs are mounting from the damage caused by extreme weather on roads, railways, bridges and other basic infrastructure