In a recent article for The Conversation, PhD candidate Adam Skoyles together with Principal Investigator and RISE Project Director Michael Drescher make the case for enhancing residential communities with green infrastructure as an option for municipalities to prepare for and fight the effects of climate change.
Green infrastructure are natural spaces like parks, wetlands and woodlands, that provide key ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, microclimate regulation, and stormwater runoff control, that are beneficial to cities and their residents. When used intentionally to address societal challenges, they are referred to as nature-based solutions.
Nature-based solutions, however, are rarely implemented in residential developments for a variety of reasons. Through their recent study, Skoyles interviewed municipal planners and residential developers to understand whether there are opportunities to balance competing goals by increasing the use of nature-based solutions. They found that while some developers see protected nature as a barrier to development, others understand that it provides benefits to residents, and some even try to innovate through the use of nature. For their part, municipal planners are concerned over maintenance costs or interference with infrastructure and may push back on innovation.
Ultimately, both planners and developers recognized that nature can help communities fight climate change and identified three key opportunities to support building more sustainable and climate-ready communities:
- Provincial or municipal policy changes that value nature-based solutions.
- Tools that can rigorously quantify climate change benefits of nature-based solutions.
- Public-private sector collaboration for increased use of nature-based solutions.
A green roof in downtown Vancouver. The trees provide habitat for birds, store carbon, absorb rainwater and cool surrounding areas. Photo credit: Adam Skoyles.