As part of the Seventh UNECE International PPP Forum, UNECE organized a competition to showcase the best public-private partnership (PPP) and infrastructure projects that contribute to the circular economy agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
For this competition - the second of this kind organized by the UNECE - projects needed to address sustainable development issues and fulfil circular economy characteristics, such as reducing the use of virgin materials, reusing existing resources, repairing existing products, remanufacturing assets, recycling components, and recovering energy from non-recyclable waste, whilst keeping a localized approach and regenerating natural systems where possible.
By utilizing the UNECE PPP and Infrastructure Evaluation and Rating System (PIERS) Methodology for rating projects, the competition also served to help raise awareness on its usefulness to identify, develop and implement PPP and infrastructure projects aligned with the SDGs.
The finalists were selected by an international jury from a total of 49 projects from 33 countries, for a total capital expenditure of 38.7 billion US dollars, in crucial sectors such as sustainable transportation, healthcare, education, water and sanitation, waste management and renewable energy diverse sectors.
The winning projects were directly voted by the Forum participants as follows, with a total of 497 electronic votes cast:
-
The winner of the award is the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge project, the longest suspended bridge in the world across the Dardanelles in Türkiye;
-
The second placed project was an energy renovation project for public buildings in Ljubljana, Slovenia; and
-
The third place went to a Waste-to-Energy project in Dharan, Nepal, that is contributing to reducing landfilling by 75 percent.
