Access to critical infrastructures – driver of resilient development

Infrastructures like water, energy and transport are of utmost importance for societies to function well. Their importance has also been acknowledged in various documents of the Post-2015 Agenda that will guide the development and governance of countries over the coming decades. While a universally accepted definition of so-called critical infrastructure (CI) is still missing, the EU defines a CI as an "asset, system or part thereof […] which is essential for the maintenance of vital societal functions, health, safety, security, economic or social well-being of people" (EU 2008). Accordingly, most countries' CI sectors would comprise energy, communication, transport, health, water, and food. However, debates around CI are characterised by a weighty gap: while the resilience of CIs to impacts of extreme events induced by natural hazards, terrorism or cyber-crime is much discussed and analysed, the resilience of societies to longer infrastructure disruptions mostly remains a blind spot. Societies are increasingly depending on CI supply; hence, social vulnerability to long-term failures is very high, including in low-income countries with already rather instable supplies that can suffer severely from disasters. Although experiences with outages may be high, capacities to cope with long failures are low due to the often already precarious living conditions. Based on the case of the 2015 Gorkha earthquakes in Nepal, we highlight the severe social impacts of CI outages and show the demand for integrated approaches to strengthen coping capacities and avoid long-term negative impacts.