Prof Phil Blythe, DARe Hub Director, then joined Jess Cook (North East Combined Authority), Adrian Johnson, and Dr Adrian Mallory (AECOM), for a panel discussion on the importance of managing and reducing carbon in both new and existing infrastructure, providing insights into barriers and opportunities in carbon management in the North East.
The panellists raised key points and questions during the discussion, for example, carbon must be embedded in procurement; knowledge sharing and building capacity are key to lasting change; community involvement is crucial; and carbon planning should be integrated from the beginning in planning processes.
Insights Prof Blythe shared during the discussion included:
- “Very few people are thinking about the resilience of our infrastructure alongside decarbonisation, but it’s becoming a bigger topic as the impacts and extremes of climate change kick in.”
- “DARe brings together stakeholders from across the transport sector to use a systems approach and understand what the nation needs.”
- “We’re so used to thinking about new infrastructure, but there’s an awful lot of existing infrastructure that, if we look after it, could be here for a long time. By maintaining what we’ve already got, that could help us reduce carbon emissions. The Romans showed just how long well-designed and maintained infrastructure can last.”
- “We must make sure we’re training the next generation to use systems thinking – without it, we’ll never come up with sustainable solutions.”
Transport is simultaneously the biggest contributor to emissions in the North East and particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Events like extreme rainfall and flooding can bring the regions transport systems to a standstill and cause vast amounts of damage to infrastructure, bringing an increased risk to the health and wellbeing of the population. That is why the DARe Hub is taking a ‘systems of systems’ approach in our research – we need to consider the whole transport system and all interconnections and interdependencies, balancing decarbonisation, adaptation, and resilience whilst moving away from thinking about individual networks and assets.
We look forward to continuing to work with the Institution of Civil Engineers and the new North East Climate Action Group.
