- Road infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean faces growing risks from extreme weather events and the loss of natural capital that cannot be addressed through local solutions alone.
- The IDB is advancing a new model of regenerative roads that integrates resilient infrastructure and nature-based solutions at the landscape scale.
- The project being developed along Guatemala’s Northern Corridor (CA-9 North) demonstrates that this approach is viable and cost-effective, has significant potential for replication, and generates environmental, social, and economic benefits.
Road infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) faces a threefold challenge: poor logistics performance, growing exposure to natural hazards, and the accelerating loss of natural capital. These factors call for an urgent shift toward more sustainable and resilient infrastructure models that are adapted to the region’s environmental characteristics through a systemic approach.
To address these challenges, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is supporting LAC countries in identifying, assessing, designing, and implementing innovative solutions, including nature-based solutions (NbS) at the landscape scale.
Poor logistics performance and extreme weather events increase costs and damage to transport infrastructure in LAC. Between 1972 and 2010, disasters caused an estimated average of US$400 million in combined infrastructure damages and losses per event, with transport assets typically the hardest-hit subsector. The loss of forest cover—with nearly 3 million hectares deforested annually between 2010 and 2020—further exacerbates risks such as flooding, landslides, and erosion by removing natural protective barriers (see Figure 1).
Against this backdrop, local solutions, such as resilient infrastructure and NbS implemented near roads, are often insufficient in the face of deforestation and extreme rainfall, leading to more frequent damage, high maintenance costs, and even the collapse of strategic infrastructure.
In response to this challenge, the IDB is proposing a new model of regenerative roads, combining resilient gray infrastructure with landscape-scale NbS. This approach seeks not only to protect infrastructure by reducing surface runoff, but also to conserve and regenerate degraded ecosystems, generating environmental and social benefits that strengthen both road and socioeconomic resilience.
The key is to expand the scale of intervention. Road infrastructure needs to be understood as part of an integrated system with its natural surroundings (see Figure 2). Conserving forests, restoring soils, and managing landscapes holistically can help reduce water flows, significantly lowering risks to road infrastructure and communities during extreme rainfall events. Evidence shows that maintaining forested buffer zones near roads can be 16 times more cost-effective than repairing damage.
Incorporating NbS at the landscape scale aims to protect road infrastructure from the middle and upper reaches of watersheds. This innovative approach includes conserving remaining forests and restoring forest cover through economically viable productive activities for local producers. These solutions can be aligned with national forest incentive programs, payments for ecosystem services, and private financing schemes targeting small-scale producers. They can also generate social and economic benefits, including rural employment and improved livelihoods, connecting climate resilience with inclusive development.
In addition, the landscape-scale approach can help identify and prioritize areas of high biological value and establish strategic natural corridors that maximize positive impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems.
One example of this integrated design approach is Guatemala’s CA-9 North Corridor Development Program. The program aims to expand to four lanes the road section between El Rancho and Mayuelas, which connects Guatemala City with the country’s Atlantic and Pacific ports and carries 71.5% of the country’s exports, particularly agricultural exports.
The corridor faces severe traffic congestion, speeds below those expected for this type of corridor (40 vs. 80 km/h), and high exposure to landslides, flooding, and erosion. This is not an isolated case: 49% of the country’s roads face severe landslide risk, exacerbated by deforestation within watersheds.
One of the key elements in the design of the Guatemala program was the incorporation of a probabilistic risk analysis based on a Failure Mode Identification Workshop, including advanced hydrological modeling following an IDB methodology for strengthening resilience in infrastructure projects. This approach made it possible to estimate the impact of different resilience measures and model both forest-cover loss and landscape-scale NbS.
The modeling showed that extreme events can increase peak flows by between 3% and more than 500%, depending on the sub-watershed and climate scenario. In addition, forest-cover degradation can add an average of 10% to these flows. In contrast, implementing landscape-scale NbS could reduce them by up to 30%, on average.
In economic terms, the analysis confirmed that landscape-scale NbS are not only environmentally effective but also financially viable. The study estimated direct and indirect losses and found that extreme events increase economic risk by 883% under current conditions and by 943% under the corridor expansion scenario. Restoring approximately 25,000 hectares in vulnerable watersheds could, in turn, reduce economic risk by 65%.
The major challenge lies in how to sustainably transform these territories at the middle- and upper-watershed levels. Conserving and protecting existing forests at risk, implementing payments for environmental services, making sustainable use of timber and non-timber products, and introducing agroforestry systems, for example, could provide profitable alternatives for producers living in these areas.
These solutions should also be implemented through a restoration approach in areas vulnerable to erosion, while prioritizing ecological connectivity. Achieving this requires overcoming structural barriers such as:
- Access to financing for producers who are not bankable, requiring the development of financial instruments that enable these producers to access resources.
- Affordable technical assistance for small producers in remote and difficult-to-access areas. This also involves supporting producer associations and local governance and seeking partnerships with local public and private platforms that can help scale nature-based solutions.
- Access to markets, including not only markets for differentiated products, such as organic products, but also markets for ecosystem services, including carbon markets or biodiversity credits.
The regenerative roads model represents a new way of conceiving road infrastructure in LAC. Developing resilient road networks that are integrated into the landscape at the middle- and upper-watershed levels, protect communities, and generate environmental, social, and economic benefits is not only environmentally desirable but also economically sound. It can deliver transport solutions that integrate the conservation and sustainable management of natural capital and biodiversity. Advancing this model is key to building resilient, sustainable, and inclusive infrastructure—and to transforming roads into drivers of territorial transformation and development across the region.
Learn more about how regenerative roads can transform road resilience and territorial development in our region.
Also contributing to this blog post were Irene Gauto Espinola, Biodiversity and Natural Capital Specialist, and Raimon Porta, Disaster and Climate Sector Specialist.