Green road infrastructure is the “infrastructure that, throughout all its project cycle phases, from early sectoral strategic planning to design, construction, operation, intervention and dismantling, integrates environmental, social, technological and engineering considerations to avoid, prevent, mitigate and correct potential negative environmental impacts generated by this type of projects, including direct, indirect, synergistic and cumulative impacts, generating a positive net environmental balance ”(WWF, MADS, FCDS, 2020).
Considering criteria that promotes the resilience of socio-ecosystems and the maintenance of ecosystem services and flows could avoid impacts on roads and reduce costs, especially long-term maintenance costs. Most common impacts that affect road infrastructure relates to drastic changes in climate or climate variability, such as; floods, mass removals, gales, extreme waves and erosion, or long-term impacts expected from climate change such as rising average sea levels and temperatures. Due to the influence of climate change on variability, these impacts are expected to be even more frequent and intense.
Thus, it is essential to incorporate vulnerability and climate risk analysis from early stages in road design, as well as to increase ecosystem resilience. This, to guarantee benefits and ecosystem flows in a two-way: regulation of high levels of temperatures, river flooding control, ecosystem water supply management, surface water management, coastal flood management, reduction of soil erosion, increase in adaptive capacity of species and reduction of pressures generated by internal anthropic agents and external factors in ecosystems.
An approach to the vulnerability and climate risk analysis for the development of green road infrastructure is presented for the pilot case of the Colombian Amazon road "Guaviare: Vía Calamar - San José". From the modeling and analysis, it is observed that despite the incidence of climate change and its possible future impacts, in this case, the levels of vulnerability and social, environmental and infrastructure risk are the main starting points to manage better adaptation, promote landscape resilience and avoid the materialization of greater climate-related impacts.