Infrastructure wakeup call.

• Position: OFF THE NEWS

"[We] estimate $57 trillion in [global] infrastructure investment will be required between now and 2030--simply to keep up with projected global GDP growth. This figure includes the infrastructure investment required for transport (road, rail, ports, and airports), power, water, and telecommunications. It is, admittedly, a rough estimate, but its scale is significant--nearly 60 percent more than the $36 trillion spent globally on infrastructure over the past eighteen years. The $57 trillion required investment is more than the estimated value of today's worldwide infrastructure. Even then, this amount would not be sufficient to address major backlogs and deficiencies in infrastructure maintenance and renewal or meet the broader development goals of emerging economies. Moreover, the task of funding the world's infrastructure needs is more difficult because of constraints on public-sector budgets and commercial debt in the wake of the financial crisis, higher and more volatile resource costs, and the additional costs of making infrastructure resilient to climate change and less harmful to the environment.

"The size of the infrastructure 'gap' and the undoubted challenges there are in finding...