Nature-based Solutions, Green Infrastructure

Reducing excess urban heat and protecting populations from extreme temperatures is one of the 21st century’s key resilience and sustainability challenges. As the planet warms, cities are increasingly finding that they need new ways to keep urban temperatures down to protect their residents. Urban cooling options have primarily focused on space cooling through air conditioning. Nature-based solutions and leveraging urban design to cool cities have yet to be fully deployed and understood, especially by policymakers and urban planners.

To deliver a nature-positive future the world needs to be able to measure progress towards global goals, but currently lacks the tools to do so. IUCN is developing a quantitative methodology to measure and track contributions towards protecting and restoring nature. The methodology will help companies, governments and civil society assess opportunities and risks, set targets, measure progress, deliver nature-positive impacts, as well as assess investment portfolios and value-chain impacts.

“Banco San Miguel y Bahía de Asunción” Ecological Reserve is the city’s largest green area. Spreading over 300 hectares, this unique ecosystem is recognized worldwide as a conservation site for shore and migratory birds. However, the reserve is home to numerous families living in vulnerable conditions. Waste management has become a social and environmental challenge in the area, but the community is working with the Asunción Green City project to reduce irregular dumpsites and restore the reserve.

 

This publication is part of a series of three papers exploring the different aspects of urban green infrastructure solutions. This first part explores Urban Green Infrastructure and Nature-Based Solutions. It also digs in the climatic threats in the Latinamerica and the Caribbean region to which Urban Green Infraestructure could contribute to solve, and present a portfolio of 21 cases studies on green infrastructure solutions in both developed and developing countries.

Cities worldwide are facing resilience challenges as climate risks interact with urbanization, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, poverty, and rising socioeconomic inequality. Extreme precipitation events, flooding, heatwaves, and droughts are causing economic losses, social insecurity, and affecting wellbeing. Over time, urban resilience challenges are expected to grow, driven by processes such as urbanization, land use, and climate change.

This document summarises outcomes from the Commission individual expert reports delivered through its ‘Valorisation of NBS Projects’ initiative. EU research and innovation projects were scanned for results pertaining to key areas such as biodiversity, climate change mitigation and adaptation (including flooding), water quality, air quality and microclimate, sustainable communities, innovative governance and business models, and market challenges and solutions.

Africa is urbanizing late but fast. This brings many benefits but, as this report shows: thus far, urbanization in Africa, unique in a number of respects, is having deleterious and largely unchecked impacts on the natural environment; the degradation of natural assets and ecosystems within African cities carries tangible economic, fiscal and social costs; there are important opportunities to change the current environmental trajectory of African cities so that they move towards a more harmonious relationship between their natural and built environments.

Such solutions have the potential to integrate natural habitats, processes, and services as part of a coherent and holistic approach to water management, particularly in the urban context. They can provide multiple functions beyond conventional flood mitigation, generating a range of benefits by restoring and conserving natural capital, improving the live ability of urban spaces, increasing resilience, and contributing to more sustainable outcomes.