While infrastructure is essential for economic and social development and well-being, poorly designed urban development can significantly harm the environment, wildlife, and natural habitats.
The inappropriate design and location of infrastructure and the lack of integration between infrastructure and the natural environment are the leading causes of infrastructure development adversely impacting the environment.
Striking a balance between development and environmental conservation is crucial to ensuring sustainable development while protecting the environment for future generations. But achieving this can be tricky and challenging.
In Nepal, rapid infrastructure developments in the past decades have threatened the country’s forests and wildlife habitats, like Bengal tigers and one-horned rhinos. Infrastructure development poses risks like roadkill and habitat fragmentation.
These problems have put at odds two groups of people: engineers and those who work in forestry. The group of engineers accused those in the forestry of being “anti-development”, while the forestry group called the other “anti-nature”.
To mitigate the problem, Nepal’s leading civil engineering and forestry institutions are collaborating for the first time to develop new courses for their students to bridge the gap between infrastructure development and biodiversity conservation.
Mongabay reports that “Educators from Tribhuvan University’s Institute of Engineering (IoE) and Institute of Forestry (IoF) are for the first time developing a joint curriculum on linear infrastructure for undergraduate civil engineering students and postgraduate forestry students.”
The article reports that officials at the Ministry of Forest and Environment, primarily staffed by IoF graduates, often clash ideologically with their counterparts from the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport, most of whom are IoE graduates. Engineers prioritize efficiency and safety, while foresters hesitate to issue permits for infrastructure in sensitive areas.
Research finds that linear infrastructure can harm wildlife indirectly by breaking up their habitats. It calls for interdisciplinary communications between sectors as a solution.
The collaboration between Nepal’s two institutions has already led to the introduction of guidelines for wildlife-friendly infrastructure. The guidelines establish minimum requirements for safe wildlife passage during infrastructure development and operation, including building overpasses and underpasses to help animals avoid vehicle traffic and power lines. The article notes that Nepal’s two institutions will roll out the cross-disciplinary curricula they have developed in the coming semester.
“This initiative demonstrates that development and conservation can coexist in Nepal, where they are often seen as opposites,” Sushil Bahadur Bajracharya, a professor at the IoE, told Mongabay.
The National Geographic article shows how wildlife overpasses and underpasses help preserve and protect the lives of animals of all sizes, especially threatened and endangered species worldwide, where infrastructure needs to exist. For example, in just one stretch of highway in Utah, 106 animals died in two years due to car collisions; these include deer, moose, elk, raccoons, and cougars.
These accidents also claim human lives and are very costly, according to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, from human injuries, death, towing, vehicle repair, investigation costs, and carcass disposal. These collisions between wildlife and motor vehicles have increased by 50% in the last 15 years.
However, wildlife crossings strategically placed on national highways and busy roads worldwide, such as in the United States, Australia, Mexico, London, and Brazil, prevent deaths, reduce accidents that cause the deaths of both animals and humans, and save money.
Rob Ament, the road ecology program manager at Western Transportation Institute (WTI) at Montana University, says that these wildlife crossings and fencing that guide animals under or over highways have reduced collisions by 85 to 95%.
Studies also support that wildlife crossings are practical solutions to preserve wildlife and their habitats. A report cited by National Geographic shows that a wildlife overpass in a two-mile stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway has reduced wildlife-vehicle crashes from an average of 12 a year to 2.5, a 90% reduction.
Wildlife crossings are examples of green and sustainable construction that are increasingly being implemented in many parts of the world.
It has been proven that infrastructure development and expansion, if done with careful thought and built hand in hand with green infrastructure, can have minimum impact on the environment, wildlife, and their habitats.
Wildlife crossing helps minimize the effects of infrastructure development on the natural environment and built worlds, allowing them to coexist in harmony.
Planning for and investing in climate- and wildlife-friendly infrastructure is essential to holistic infrastructure asset management.
Source:
Joshi, A. (2024, June 17). Nepal’s top engineering, forestry colleges to align on development and conservation. Mongabay. Retrieved from https://news.mongabay.com/2024/06/nepals-top-engineering-forestry-colleges-to-align-on-development-and-conservation/
Vartan, S. (2019, April 17). How wildlife bridges over highways make animals—and people—safer. National Geographic. Retrieve from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wildlife-overpasses-underpasses-make-animals-people-safer
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