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Lia Hudgins

King

English I Honors

02 March 2019

Generalizing Infrastructure: What Can We Do?

The UN has many goals. 17, in fact, dedicated solely to the advancement of our world,

and as the future of the aforementioned world, we have all the power to change it. Infrastructure

is a crucial and underfunded goal that, if properly invested in, can likely change the world as we

know it. The UN targets this goal as highly important and wants to focus on providing a better,

environmentally safe way to develop not only ourselves and what is local to us, but also

ourselves as an entire planet. And for the most part, we already have that figured out- the key to

fixing infrastructure once and for all is simply to invest in it.

WHAT IS INFRASTRUCTURE?

Infrastructure doesn’t have a set definition, it’s rather defined by a system of long term,

functional industries. The most common types that the UN wants to invest in are transport,

irrigation, energy, and information/communication technologies. (Goal 9) These are actually

very general topics, and by investing in them we can solve not only the four large categories, but

also smaller subcategories that many people will focus on, but not understand how they can all

connect. Overall, the connection of all of these is necessary for our development. There are

plenty of countries, too many countries that are defined as “developing.” Without fixing the
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problems that come with no good infrastructure or manufacturing, how can these communities

ever leave the “developing” stage?

WHY

Right now, the gap from what is being invested in infrastructure and what needs to be

invested is far too high, in total throughout the world, that gap measures 15 trillion dollars wide.

In America, that gap is at 3.8 trillion dollars and the smallest gap measures 728 million dollars

out, currently held in Germany. (Forecasting) Many impoverished and “developing” countries

have a gap of somewhere in between 100-150 Billion dollars for that gap, exacerbated by the fact

that they will likely never get out of that hole. No other countries have put forth such an effort,

except China. China prospers in this aspect. They invest hundreds of millions of Yuan (Chinese

dollars) into their infrastructure through Five Year Plans. From the 1990s to now, they have seen

a very significant uprising in the way their transportation and information technology

investments work, in other words, they have soared. China is also very agrarian even with their

technology, so they use their investments in irrigation to help themselves agriculturally as well.

(China) This process of investments has created jobs and increased production for the 1 billion

plus population they face, and as a country we are in need of that.

THE COSTS

Despite this, China is still in need of many developments and faces a large gap between

input and needed investments of 1.9 trillion dollars. They are doing well, but being trillions of

dollars behind is just not going to be enough. The costs are high to get the rest of the human

population turned on this, but in the end, these investments are called investments for a reason.
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They are proven to work, (China) and they can only fix this planet if we allow them to and work

with them.

To learn how you can help, there is an organization called Thrive, they are a group found

online that gives information and resources about most world issues in depth and resources/ways

that you can help fix these problems. Their tab on infrastructure focuses on repairing this broken

system, making it useful again, and making it environmentally safe and sustainable. They

provide information on regulating wind, green, water, solar, transportation, manufacturing, and

financing, which as mentioned above, have several easy to solve subcategories. They show us

that there is truly a situation to this problem. (Thrive)

There is also the Global Infrastructure Outlook, which forecasts the estimated gaps,

needs, and current trends on infrastructure investments in every country, broken down by

category. (Forecast)

With organizations like these and the input of growing superpowers like China, there is already a

will to get these shows on the road, and begin to change our world for the better again. Overall,

this system is incredibly overlooked, and with the proper tools, we can really begin to make a

change towards the development of this town, this city, this country, or this planet.

Works Cited

“Forecasting Infrastructure Investment Needs and Gaps.” Global Infrastructure Outlook - A G20

INITIATIVE, outlook.gihub.org/.

“Infrastructure and Industrialization - United Nations Sustainable Development.” United

Nations, United Nations, www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/infrastructure-

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industrialization/.

“Solutions by Sector.” What Is "Worldview" and Why Is It Important? | Thrive,

www.thrivemovement.com/sector_solutions-infrastructure.

Qin, Yu. “China’s Transport Infrastructure Investment: Past, Present, and Future.” EBSCO

Publishing Service Selection Page, July 2016,

web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=6&sid=2a182c80-caf8-4f4c-9493-

64ac9aa33528%40sessionmgr104.

(EBSCOHost won’t site)