Abstract: This report analyses planned infrastructure projects, decision-making frameworks related to infrastructure development and strategic planning documents in eight countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. It compares current investment flows with countries' national development objectives to identify misalignments and provides policy-makers with recommendations to improve the integration of climate change and other environmental concerns into infrastucture development decision-making processes. The report presents a comprehensive overview of infrastructure investment, primarily in the transport and energy sectors, throughout the region and identifies the risks and opportunities emerging from current investment patterns

This report analyses planned infrastructure projects, decision-making frameworks related to infrastructure development and strategic planning documents in eight countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

This report analyses planned infrastructure projects, decision-making frameworks related to infrastructure development and strategic planning documents in the six countries of the EU Eastern Partnership: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

Investment in infrastructure is essential for promoting economic growth, and while countries in Asia have enjoyed higher rates of gross domestic product growth in recent years, the region remains severely deficient in the scale and quality of sustainable infrastructure. Moreover, population growth and climate change continue to put increasing pressure on the need for strategic and farsighted development, calling for policy makers to reevaluate infrastructure governance to ensure sustainable economic growth. Currently, in developing Asia, most investment in infrastructure comes from the public sector. However, with growing fiscal deficits and other budgetary constraints, it is essential to develop alternative sources of investment for infrastructure projects. This presents opportunities to tap into the private sector, which can play an instrumental role in minimizing the funding gap through the development of stronger, more transparent public–private partnerships (PPPs) and incentivizing sustainable infrastructure investment. This book provides a scholarly discussion on the importance of PPPs and approaches to unlock private participation in infrastructure investment based on lessons from across Asia. Among the proposed schemes are government tax incentives, development-based land value capture strategy under PPP land pooling, Viability Gap Funds, Project Development Facilities, and other guarantees. The book aims to assess the impacts and future of sustainable infrastructure investments and examines the role of governments in mobilizing financial resources and new models for unlocking private investment in sustainable infrastructure. This book consists of fifteen original chapters on the experiences of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) and a few other cases for promoting private investment in sustainable infrastructure. The fact that not much has been published previously on this theme makes this book a welcome and timely addition to the much needed knowledge on this subject. ‘The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylor fran cis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- Non- Commercial- No Derivatives 4.0 license.’

Since the 1990’s, the countries of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) have made great progress in pursuing economic development that is also environmentally sustainable. The countries, in collaboration with the GREEN Action Task Force hosted by the OECD, has developed a number of policies aiming to improve environmental quality and social well-being, while creating opportunities for strong economic growth and decent jobs in the region.

This book analyses the seminal role of megaprojects for sustainable development, and the related, complex challenges they bring. It provides insights into the growing social responsibilities that megaprojects have, not only to be environmentally sustainable, but also towards the multitude of stakeholders involved, whether directly or indirectly. After an historical overview of the increasingly necessary links between sustainable infrastructure and megaprojects, the book builds on and applies stakeholder theory to stakeholder engagement and management in megaprojects. It also emphasizes the importance of building impact assessment frameworks that consider the unheard voices that are often passively sitting at the receiving end of a megaproject, as well as the local context where the megaproject is embedded. The book then proceeds to analyse the case of a very contested transnational railway megaproject between Italy and France, the Turin-Lyon high-speed railway, which has been suffering from stakeholder and communication issues for over thirty years, as well as from notable managerial and legal differences in the two countries. In this way, the book informs both theory and practice and encourages scholarly interventions into wicked problems. It contains a comprehensive review of the academic literature on the sustainability, sustainability challenges, and sustainability reporting of megaprojects. Conceptual models, frameworks and future research opportunities are provided to clarify the empirical challenges and highlight the gaps and opportunities to be explored by researchers and practitioners in future. The audience for the book is both academic researchers and practitioners in the field of megaprojects and more specifically, those dealing with managing transnational megaprojects. It also includes several topics that will be of interest to policy and decision-makers.