Adaptive Climate Governance Capability for Resilient Road Infrastructure under Climate Stress

Road infrastructure systems are increasingly exposed to climate stressors such as flooding, extreme rainfall, erosion, heatwaves and slope instability, creating growing challenges for infrastructure reliability, connectivity and lifecycle sustainability. Existing resilience approaches have predominantly emphasised engineering robustness and technical adaptation while under-theorising the governance capabilities required to manage climate uncertainty across the infrastructure lifecycle. This paper addresses this gap by developing a conceptual framework for Adaptive Climate Governance Capability (ACGC) in road infrastructure projects under climate stress. Drawing on Adaptive Governance Theory and Complex Adaptive Systems Theory, the paper argues that resilient road infrastructure is not solely an engineering outcome but an emergent governance capability shaped by climate-risk intelligence, adaptive decision-making, collaborative stakeholder governance, resilient procurement and contracting, and lifecycle monitoring and institutional learning. The framework conceptualises resilience as a dynamic governance-enabled capacity to anticipate, absorb, recover from and adapt to climate-related disruptions under conditions of uncertainty and institutional interdependence. The paper further develops a set of theoretically grounded propositions to guide future empirical validation using survey, case-study or mixed-methods approaches. The study contributes to sustainable built environment research by reframing infrastructure resilience from static asset protection toward adaptive governance capability. It provides a foundation for more climate-responsive infrastructure delivery systems. From Waste to Resource: Investigating the Constraints to Construction and Demolition Waste (C&DW) Reuse in the Global South Nontokozo Nkosi1, Osamudiamen Otasowie1 Construction Management & Quantity Surveying, University of Johannesburg, South Africa nontokozonkosi020@gmail.com C&DW reuse is widely recognised as a fundamental circular economy (CE) strategy for reducing resource depletion and environmental impacts. However, its implementation remains limited across many countries in the Global