THE DUAL ROLE OF GLOBAL INFRASTRUCTURE IN CLIMATE CHANGE: NEW RISKS AND CHALLENGES.

The paper (opening keynote lecture of the 6-th Eurasia Risk 2024 Conference) examines, from the interdisciplinary positions of the infranetics umbrella science and MABICS convergent technologies, the problem of climate change as a generally recognized consequence of the heating of the Earth's atmosphere due to uncontrolled emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) by the global infrastructure (GI) – the second, artificial, nature created by man. An overview is given of the state of the problem of reducing the carbon footprint (CF) of the global system of infrastructure systems, which, on the one hand, ensures the sustainable development of the mankind, and on the other hand, is the main cause of global warming, which, if not combated, poses an existential threat to humanity. It is shown that the problem of restoring and maintaining the homeostasis of planetary ecology consists in ensuring a balance between two opposite processes – sustainable socio-economic development of the world community and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, by achieving net zero emissions. The problem of quantitative accounting, assessing and minimizing the infrastructures CF at all stages of their life cycle (LC), including diagnostics, monitoring, maintenance, recovery from accidents and disasters, is considered. Significant information gaps and scatter in CF estimates are noted, which indicate insufficient accuracy of the currently used methods. It is shown that it is necessary to develop a working algorithm for solving the global carbon balance equation considering climate change, according to the top-down scheme, which shows the contribution to the global CF of each infrastructure over time, according to the criterion of achieving zero CO₂ emissions by 2060, in accordance with countries’ obligations under the Paris Protocol of 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]