One area that’s particularly exciting is how we can design new water infrastructure that not only meets the needs of society, but also enhances nature. By incorporating vegetation, soils and natural processes into our engineering solutions, formerly gray infrastructure approaches are turning green. This green infrastructure (GI) approach helps connect human activities to ecosystem services — such as water availability, flood mitigation and erosion control — that support our lives.

In a new guide prepared for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), we summarize a wide range of GI applications and their benefits, offering an expanded scope in terms of application and scale. From site specific technologies such as rain gardens and green roofs, to regional planning and engineering strategies that target conservation of natural landscapes and watersheds, GI can fit a variety of settings and needs.

Additionally, GI approaches can be linked with existing and planned gray infrastructure networks to create more sustainable built systems that minimize environmental impact. In terms of disaster resilience, resulting win-win outcomes can enhance community resilience where GI offers water retention and groundwater recharge, flood mitigation, erosion control, shoreline stabilization, improved water quality and energy conservation.

GI has traditionally addressed the benefits to both people and nature through the management of stormwater runoff. However, we have found that GI approaches are increasingly being applied more broadly to provide a range of solutions in a variety of settings and scales beyond that of urban stormwater management. This understanding offered a dynamic backdrop of possibilities during last month’s annual World Water Week in Stockholm, the theme of which was “water, ecosystems and human development.”

Let’s look at some of these different applications and the benefits they provide:

In terms of scale, regional approaches often integrate multiple GI approaches to meet watershed-wide goals and objectives for people and nature. For example, on the USAID-funded PARA-Agua project in Peru, ArchTam facilitated watershed planning meetings with civil engineers, infrastructure managers, conservationists, and representatives of watershed authorities in order to evaluate improved engineering design options for water management infrastructure as a whole. Infrastructure systems considered for a “green upgrade” included reservoirs for water storage, irrigation systems and drinking water supply.

The result of this effort was that stakeholders were able to define and work toward a shared vision to improve infrastructure function through better water conservation technologies, and to link infrastructure with groundwater recharge areas in order to safeguard the water resources on which these infrastructure assets depend.

In terms of setting, urban stormwater runoff systems offer benefits beyond their immediate context of capturing and channeling floodwaters away from densely populated areas. For example, efforts are now employed to channel floodwaters to rain gardens and natural landscapes to enhance the quality of the urban environment. Rural GI can focus on engineering applications to enhance crop productivity by increasing the efficiency of water use, increasing water infiltration and groundwater recharge, and reducing top soil loss from wind and water erosion. And of course, in both urban and rural landscapes, incorporating vegetation and improved flora management into built and natural systems can enhance resiliency of human settlements by reducing flood risks.

The opportunities to maximize win-win solutions with GI are seemingly boundless as we learn daily about applications in new contexts and settings. This is inspiring for practitioners and managers alike, with the water-human-ecosystem nexus one of the primary topics of conversation at the World Water Week event.

By integrating the needs of natural systems with those of the built environment in a range of settings, GI protects natural resources and ecosystem functions from varied impacts of human activities.

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NBS, including green infrastructure, adopts or mirrors natural systems and processes to improve water availability (e.g., groundwater recharge) and water quality (e.g., natural and constructed wetlands), and to reduce risks from water-related disasters and climate change (e.g., green roofs).

However, the reality is that much of the water management practice has been traditionally dominated by human-built, grey infrastructure. As such, the potential for NBS remains under-utilized. Green infrastructure — as an approach that protects, restores or mimics the natural water cycle and other ecosystem services — has the power to replace, enhance or work in parallel with grey infrastructure in a cost-effective manner. NBS shows potential in achieving progress toward sustainable food production, improved human settlements, access to water supply and sanitation, water-related disaster risk reduction and responding to the impacts of climate change on water resources. Development solutions that integrate ecosystem structure and function will inherently realize cost savings as these approaches conserve and sustain both the natural resource base and the environment, in addition to the infrastructure on which human settlements depend.

Growing interest in NBS is reflected in how it is increasingly incorporated into policy developments in the management of water resources, biodiversity, urban settlements and many other sectors. As we approach the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) deadline (the targets set to provide universal coverage for WASH, or “water, sanitation and hygiene”), the focus is rightly turning toward common objectives and supportive actions in line with these SDG policy priorities.

The real challenge is finding effective ways to blend green and grey interventions that optimize return on investments, maximize efficiencies and minimize costs. WWDR 2018 addresses these points head on and identifies four conditions that need to be met in order to scale uptake:

• Leveraging financing: The need for broader application of NBS can be met with a special call for redirecting and making more effective use of existing financial instruments, such as green bonds.
• Enabling environments for regulation and law: The existing framework for water management is based on a grey-infrastructure approach mindset; so at best, NBS tends to be an afterthought. NBS needs to be promoted more effectively through existing regulatory regimes, rather than creating them anew.
• Improving cross-sectoral collaboration: The nature of NBS requires a much higher degree of collaboration across institutions than grey-infrastructure approaches, as well as better harmonization across economic, social and environmental policy agendas. Policy champions are key in fostering this type of collaboration.
• Improving the knowledge base: Science, evidence and examples from practical application all provide much-needed proof for decision-makers on the feasibility of NBS. As a sector, we need to do a much better job in documenting and articulating the benefits and steps involved in changing practice.

The last point — application and uptake — is the cornerstone of these four preconditions. Without it, little will practically change on the ground, even if the three other preconditions are satisfactorily met.

To this end, USAID has recognized the importance green infrastructure plays in sustaining ecosystem services and has developed practical guidance for decision-makers involved in the planning and design of these solutions. In support of USAID, ArchTam developed the Green Infrastructure Resource Guide^[1] that defines green infrastructure, outlines how it can help communities adapt to human and environmental stress, and introduces 12 benefits that are associated with specific interventions. Interventions such as groundwater recharge to managing soil slope stabilization are reviewed in detail, including specific engineering-design options that can be implemented. The guide concludes with a discussion about how green infrastructure can be applied at various scales, in different settings and under what conditions.

ArchTam has implemented the green infrastructure concepts outlined in the resource guide on USAID-funded projects, demonstrating their importance and how they can enhance and protect natural resources. Through the USAID PARA-Agua project in Peru and Colombia, ArchTam helped communities and water-user groups improve their knowledge base by gathering and analyzing climate and watershed data to enable effective decision making on appropriate green infrastructure design options, and helped develop financial instruments to fund them.

On the USAID Be Secure project in the Philippines, ArchTam promoted effective integrated water-resources-management approaches to safeguard downstream city water supplies. Green infrastructure interventions linking best practices in upper watersheds with downstream water supplies demonstrated the importance of NBS to city water security and climate readiness.

As the WWDR concludes, “increased deployment of NBS is central to meeting the key contemporary water resources management challenges… Without a more rapid uptake of NBS, water security will continue to decline.”

This call should encourage us all to “go green,” not only during events such as World Water Day, but also consistently throughout our work. As such, ArchTam continues to seek opportunities to apply green infrastructure and NBS approaches through our USAID-funded programs and other projects.

This blog post is part of a series celebrating Earth Day 2018.

[1] USAID’s Green Infrastructure Resource Guide was co-authored and co-designed by ArchTam’s Stephen Blanton, Iulia Barbu, Meg Findley, Aaron Weieneth, Elizabeth Durfee, Melissa Hess, Jason Matus and Gina DeSimone. It is the successful result of joint collaboration across multiple ArchTam offices. 

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