Greening Infrastructure Governance and Financing in Flanders

Flanders strives to deliver safe and sustainable mobility, while facing growing pressure from urban sprawl, car dependency, and ageing infrastructure. The region has a highly dispersed built environment due to ribbon development and urban sprawl. The dispersed urban environment has made delivering cost-efficient public transport difficult, which has inpart led to a high reliance on private vehicles and a large amount of space being dedicated to mobility. In addition, Flanders has a large maintenance backlog, with a significant number of assets approaching the need for renewal, upgrade or replacement. The Flemish Government has already taken action to improve sustainability, reduce emissions, improve climate resilience and address the maintenance backlog, but this still requires significant new investment. 

Flanders’ transport sector is administered by the Ministry of Mobility and Public Works (bMOW), which is responsible for the investment, management, safety and operation of transport infrastructure, including roads, inland waterways, regional airports, ports, maritime access, public transport and active mobility. bMOW’s mandate also encompasses the implementation of environmental projects such as water management, resilience and coastal defence. It seeks to reduce emissions from the transport sector and lift the climate resilience of the transport network, in line with the EU Green Deal and the Smart and Mobility Strategy. This is critical for achieving Flanders’ climate goals, given the transport sector contributes significantly to Flanders overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Meeting public demand and delivering essential services for transport in Flanders is becoming increasingly challenging due to a changing global environment. Climate change requires new investment in greater resilience and reducing emissions, while an ageing population is leading to a reduction in workforce participants available to fund increasing investment and maintenance. These challenges must be addressed at the same time as Flanders addresses its existing maintenance backlog.  Meeting these challenges is necessary to deliver a safe, sustainable, digital-based transport network aligned with the EU’s European Green Deal, the Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy, the EU Taxonomy and the Flanders’ 5-year Integrated Transport Investment Plan.

This project will help Flanders address the challenges described above and deliver a more sustainable and climate resilient transport network by developing an approach that will help to:

• Prioritise transport activities that achieve climate and sustainability-related goals and represent good value for money;
• Improve bMOW’s investment and asset management capabilities for sustainability and climate resilience;
• Reduce the funding shortfall by maximising value for money and seeking access to external funds, such as European funds.

After assessing bMOW’s current investment and asset management needs, practices and future risk, the OECD will develop a framework based on international best practices that will assess:

• Flanders’ climate risks 
• The potential impact of the identified climate risks on the transport sector
• Proposed transport investment and asset management activities for their net emissions, climate resilience, sustainability impacts and overall value for money.

The framework will be supported by a step-by-step guidance and will include capacity-building workshops.