Infrastructure buildings and environment protection

The article begins by stating the limits and fragility of the planets natural resources and their interdependence and complementarity, referring to the complex nature of its handling. It then stresses how the present development models and their ways of using the natural resources and the environment have generated enormous pressures upon them, which endanger sustainability and life itself on the planet, it also presents an overall view of the different efforts made by the international community to stop and reverse these tendencies indicating their insufficiency and little practical usefulness. It goes on stating the importance of infrastructure building and its fundamental role as a base for development processes. It presents and describes the magnitude and strength of both direct and indirect environmental and socio-economic impacts, generated by the building and operation of infrastructure, the article ends with the proposal of a new conception for environmental management that foresees the environmental impacts and allows agreements upon their handling and mitigation. This new approach implies new visions about the man-nature interactions and about the role of infrastructure as a support to sustainability