Declaration and Vision of the IENE 2026 International Conference.
Bristol, United Kingdom, 21 – 25 September 2026
One Humanity, One Planet, One United Future
Those who build infrastructure also build the future of living landscapes.
This declaration expresses the shared commitment of IENE to a new vision for transport and energy infrastructure. It recognises that social wellbeing, biodiversity, climate, and mobility are inseparable parts of one shared future.
Humanity is entering a decisive decade. Climate change, biodiversity loss, global security risks, resource constraints, and growing demands for equitable mobility are reshaping the way infrastructure must be conceived. The decisions we make today will determine not only how people move, but the landscapes, ecosystems, and communities we hand over to future generations.
While IENE completes 30 years of activity on biodiversity and infrastructure, 2026 marks the beginning of the United Nations Decade of Sustainable Transport (2026–2035), declared by the UN General Assembly to raise global ambitions for transport in support of the Sustainable Development Goals. IENE welcomes this Decade and offers this declaration as a contribution to it. Its second Focus Area already acknowledges transport as a growing source of pollution, habitat loss and fragmentation, and calls for reduced transport emissions alongside biodiversity, habitat and ecosystem sensitive infrastructure planning, in line with the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. However, ecological connectivity and biodiversity are not yet named among its headline priorities or progress monitoring indicators. Closing that gap is exactly what this declaration calls for.
Our Vision
One humanity, one planet, one united future.
Together, we build infrastructure as the resilient, connected backbone of living landscapes where people and nature thrive.
Infrastructure does not only connect places, it also shapes the landscapes and societies in which future generations will live. Those who decide, plan, build, and manage infrastructure inevitably build landscapes too, and need to become stewards of the homes that people and nature share. IENE envisions a future where grey and green infrastructure together form one integrated system: the backbone of the living landscape that enables people and nature to flourish within Earth’s ecological boundaries, while ensuring a strong social foundation for all.
Our Mission
IENE brings together those who plan and build infrastructure and those who protect nature, to create transport and energy systems that serve society and sustain the living landscape and thriving nature we depend upon. Through research, knowledge exchange, and collaboration across sectors, IENE mainstreams biodiversity, ecological connectivity, and climate resilience into the planning, design, and operation of transport and energy infrastructure, so that building well for society and building well for nature are recognised as a single undertaking, in Europe and beyond.
Our Shared Understanding
There is only one future for people and nature, and it must be created together.
Transport and energy infrastructure shape landscapes, by severing ecological and social connections as much as by connecting places.
Those who build infrastructure are also landscape builders and transformers, sharing responsibility for ecological connectivity, biodiversity, and human wellbeing.
Grey and green infrastructure should be planned as a single, integrated system, providing the essential framework of landscapes to support both people and nature.
The purpose of infrastructure is to provide exchange, communication and accessibility within ecological limits, and this is true for nature as well as for people.
Our Commitments
The Declaration sets out seven steps through which IENE and its network commit to turning this vision into action: engaging society’s needs, mobilising a sustainable economy, governing responsibly, working differently, planning within limits, designing infrastructure as an act of stewardship, and delivering and operating resilient infrastructure. Together, these steps call for infrastructure decisions, from the earliest design choices to final operation and maintenance, to be held to the same ecological and social limits from which they were conceived.
Call to Action
We invite all those who decide, plan, finance, build, manage, and use transport and energy infrastructure to join us in creating a space where people and nature flourish together. The future will not be built by engineers or ecologists alone: it will be built together for One Humanity, One Planet and One United Future.