Green infrastructure is a planned network of green spaces and other environmental features including street trees, gardens, green roofs, community forests, parks, rivers, canals and wetlands.

Green Infrastructure Partnership

The Green Infrastructure Partnership fulfils a commitment made in the Natural Environment White Paper. The Partnership brings together expertise from over 150 partner organisations in civil society, professional bodies, local authorities, developers, planners and social housing enterprises, and academics, among others to see what more can be done.

• Richard Benyon’s speech at the launch of the Green Infrastructure Partnership.

Following two successful workshops since the Green Infrastructure Partnership’s launch in October 2011, Partners have agreed the following workstrands:

• Green Infrastructure Partnership flowchart (PDF)

A text version of this diagram is below:

Research and Evidence

Design for the Built Environment:  How to design and retrofit GI

Large Scale:  How to plan GI for ecosystem services

Neighbourhoods:  How to work with communities

Local Delivery:  How to implement GI at the local level

Valuation:  How to value and make the case for GI

Education, Training and Skills:  Ensuring that people have the skills and knowledge to deliver improved GI

Communications Strategy:  Ensure that relevant decision-makers see GI as a key part of delivering better places and have access to the tools and knowledge that will help them to implement it  -  2 way communication with local and regional groups

More GI planned and successfully delivered at the local, citywide and landscape level  =  Improved GI networks supporting stronger ecological networks, healthier communities, better quality of life, climate change adaptation & economic growth  =  Better Places for People and Wildlife

Work is now underway to identify organisations which have an interest in these workstrands, and to further refine the detail to enable Partners to take forward these workstrands in their working groups so that we can:-.

• Find ways to provide green infrastructure in towns, cities and rural areas.
• Address barriers that might prevent this progress.
• Develop an evidence base on the condition of England’s green infrastructure and how it meets the needs of communities.
• Demonstrate the many benefits that green infrastructure can bring.
• Look into how communities, planners and decision-makers can best be supported in designing and developing green infrastructure.
• Help people to quantify the costs and benefits of investing in green infrastructure and make the case for green infrastructure projects.

Defra has also commissioned a short scoping study to further develop the evidence base for the Green Infrastructure Partnership.  This study is being undertaken jointly by the Town and Country Planning Association and the Landscape Institute and the results will help to inform the future work of the Green Infrastructure Partnership.  The final scoping study report will be published in late Spring 2012.

Green infrastructure – background information

Green infrastructure can provide many social, economic and environmental benefits close to where people live and work including:

• Places for outdoor relaxation and play.
• Space and habitat for wildlife with access to nature for people.
• Climate change adaptation – for example flood alleviation and cooling urban heat islands.
• Environmental education.
• Local food production – in allotments, gardens and through agriculture.
• Improved health and well-being – lowering stress levels and providing opportunities for exercise.
• Reducing air, water and noise pollution.
• Providing green transport routes to promote walking and cycling.
• Improving quality of place and screening unsightly development.
• It can also play a major role in attracting economic growth and investment, increasing land and property benefits, promoting tourism, and increasing business productivity.

Although we don’t have an overall picture of the current state of green infrastructure, we do know that there are areas where green infrastructure needs to be improved to regenerate derelict land and tackle environmental inequality.

Recent trends are not all positive – there is evidence that Local Authorities are replacing large mature trees with smaller species that provide fewer ecosystem goods and services – and until recently the paving of front gardens was contributing to urban surface water risk.

Climate change will also increase the need for green infrastructure to cool the urban heat island and absorb and drain increased peak rainfall.

Key facts & figures

• Research from the University of Manchester suggests that green cover in urban areas may need to increase by 10% to offset predicted temperature rises.
• Vegetation, in the form of trees, parks and gardens, but also green roofs and walls, can lessen flooding by increasing rainfall capture.
• A recent study of over 350,000 people published in the Lancet found that people who lived near to green space lived longer, with significantly reduced health inequalities, even when all other factors were accounted for.
• People in deprived areas are nearly six times less likely than those in affluent ones to describe their area as ‘green’.
• One in six urban local authorities still say that their green space is declining.

Key publications

• Forest Research report on the benefits of Green Infrastructure (Forestry Commission website)
• Greenspace design for health and well-being (Forestry Commission website)
• Green Infrastructure:  Mainstreaming the Concept – Understanding and applying the principles of Green Infrastructure in South Worcestershire  (Natural England website)

Further information

• Newlands – a green infrastructure case study (Forestry Commission website)