Setting Higher Standards: Striving for a Common Approach to Sustainable, Quality Infrastructure

A barrier to the development of high-quality, sustainable infrastructure is the lack of a reliable, widely recognized global standard for identifying projects with low environmental, social, and governance risks; high debt transparency; and reliable economic returns. Blue Dot Network and FAST-Infra are two new initiatives currently being developed to address this need. This policy brief offers nine recommendations for reducing competition between the Blue Dot Network and FAST-Infra to advance quality, sustainable infrastructure on a broad scale. The recommendations range from specific technical adjustments at the standard level to global cooperation across geographies. The opportunity exists for each of these initiatives to thrive in its own sphere, with the sum of their efforts expanding quality, sustainable infrastructure across the globe.

This policy brief is based on findings from the report Building a Common Approach: Global Infrastructure Standards, which further details and compares the rationale, approach, and technical aspects of global infrastructure initiatives.