The Asia and Pacific region has achieved significant economic growth and poverty reduction over the past decades, and infrastructure development has played a vital role in this success. However, in recent years, in addition to the impacts that the pandemic imposed, the region has also experienced extreme weather events more frequently. It has become one of the most vulnerable regions in the context of climate change. Therefore, there is a need to ensure that infrastructure development is green and bankable to catalyze regional investments towards climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Against this background, there is an impetus for urgent action in prioritizing, designing, executing, and scaling up investment in resilient infrastructure. Public-private partnerships (PPP) serves as an effective financing modality to leverage upon private resources to contribute to the delivery of sustainable and climate-resilient infrastructure development. However, preparing and implementing bankable and high-quality infrastructure projects through PPP remains a significant challenge in many countries in the region.

To address this issue, ESCAP is organizing the Eighth Meeting of the Infrastructure Financing and Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) Network of Asia and the Pacific in conjunction with the 7th Istanbul Week 2023, focusing on climate-resilient and gender-inclusive infrastructure development. Additionally, it will serve as a venue to discuss in-depth, Türkiye’s recent PPP experience and achievements with featured infrastructure site visits. Experts from international development banks and the private financing sector will share their perspectives on green infrastructure development and the way forward.