Green infrastructure and the Water sector

Water is an essential component for human health and wellbeing, as well as for the maintenance of ecosystems and habitats. Green Infrastructure is an important instrument for achieving and maintaining healthy water ecosystems and offers multiple benefits to the water sector by: providing a regulation of water flows, water retention for further use later on, water purification and water provisioning, species protection, biodiversity enhancement, climate change mitigation and adaptation and disaster reduction by the prevention and mitigation of floods. To integrate Green Infrastructure aspects into water and river basin management has the potential to significantly contribute to the improvement or preservation of water of good quality and quantity. Such integration also has a large potential to reduce the impacts of floods and droughts and to mitigate hydro-morphological pressures.

Examples of water-related functions of Green Infrastructure include Natural Water Retention Measures (NWRM), which are multi-functional measures that aim to safeguard water resources using natural means and processes. The main focus of NWRM is to enhance, as well as preserve the water retention capacity of aquifers, soils and ecosystems with a view to improve their status. NWRM provide multiple benefits, including the reduction of the risks of floods and droughts, improved water quality, groundwater recharge and habitat improvement. They can be applied in several types of areas such as in rivers and wetlands (through flood plain reconnection and restoration, wetland restoration), urban areas (improving infiltration though sustainable urban drainage systems, green roofs), agricultural land (green cover, buffer zones) as well as forestry and semi-natural areas (meadows, riparian, woodland). Another example of water-related Green Infrastructure is Integrated Constructed Wetlands (ICW), artificial wetland systems that assist in waste water treatment. Although artificial wetlands systems require more space than traditional waste water management, they offer multiple benefits which go well beyond their water purification capacities (e.g., carbon-sequestration and preserving biodiversity).