Clarifying terms, concepts and contexts

Given that this is the first edition we begin with a summary of the Journal’s mission. This is followed by a brief consideration of the challenges and importance of employing shared common terminology and key concepts we think critical to the ensuing discussion about mega infrastructure investment and its relationship with efforts to promote more sustainable development. We do this with a view to not only helping to frame the various papers featured in this edition, but also to highlight the importance of contextual factors and stakeholder interpretations of the issues that have influenced decisions and judgements made concerning megaproject outputs and outcomes. We consider this acknowledgement of the importance of the ‘power of context’ and the plurality of stakeholders as particularly important and topical for mega infrastructure decision-making, given the fluidity of contextual change and the many uncertainties this brings to such investments both locally and globally. These contextual transitions can be attributed to geopolitical, environmental, socioeconomic and technological changes that have emerged since the closing decades of the twentieth century and have since intensified, with the global financial crisis of 2007/08 providing an especially important milestone. We see this period as having simultaneously spawned an era of fast-changing technological innovation and a new cocktail of interrelated challenges (some lethal) that suggest a ‘business as usual’ (BAU) approach to mega infrastructure development is not fit for purpose for the delivery of sustainable development visions of the kind envisaged by the 2015 United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the UN Paris Conference Climate Change Agreement Targets signed-off in 2016. With the above in mind, we contend that while it is critical to learn from past practices of mega infrastructure development in deciding what we can and should take forward of these experiences, and what we should curtail and abandon, this assessment should not be made without a contextual analysis of the times, cultures, places and stakeholder (including institutional) perspectives from which these lessons have been drawn. To assist in the advancement of knowledge about such developments and how they can inform/enrich the debate regarding issues of mega infrastructure and sustainability, the journal looks to contributions from diverse parties that encompass all sectors of the mega infrastructure milieu, in particular water, energy, transport, information and communications technology (ICT) and other large land-use infrastructure investments, where megaprojects are generally defined as those costing in excess of US$I billion. Infrastructure investments of this scale are targeted on the premise they share certain common characteristics that differentiate them from more modest investments, and potentially pose very significant costs and benefits to the environments and territories they traverse and serve. They are also targeted because their numbers and size appear to attract increasing investment, in turn leading to much more construction, despite the increasing complexity, rising risks and growing uncertainties as to their effectiveness and efficiencies.