y last a very long time, often generations, and also take a long time to build, SO that bringing about change in their systems requires long-range thinking and vision. Moreover, globalisation is intensifying economic and other interlinkages among countries, making it increasingly necessary to plan, develop and finance infrastructures across national borders. The key players too change over time, as the roles and responsibilities of the public and private sectors shift and evolve. Such changes underscore the importance of taking a longer-term view of both the objectives of public policy - economic, social and environmental - and the regulatory and institutional framework within which they are pursued. Hence, the next 25 years offer a useful time frame for exploring many of the issues that will need to be tackled if these various challenges are to be addressed successfully. How much investment in infrastructures is likely to be required, and what are the forces - economic, demographic, technological and environmental - shaping those requirements? How will they be financed? What difficulties is the management of infrastructure likely to confront? These are some of the key questions this publication sets out to explore. In SO doing, it will highlight the importance of considering infrastructure not just as distinct sectors but also as a series of interdependent systems. INFRASTRUCTURE TO 2030: TELECOM, LAND TRANSPORT, WATER AND ELECTRICITY - ISBN 92-64-02398-4 © OECD 2006 1. A CROSS-SECTORAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF GLOBAL INFRASTRUCTURES TO 2030 The infrastructures covered in this publication - land transport, electricity, telecommunications and water - have for many years now shown signs of increasing convergence. The various systems interact ever more closely with one another and engender all kinds of synergies, substitution effects and complementarities, but also in some cases heightened vulnerability to disruption, technical failures and malicious attack. Policy makers need to take a holistic approach t