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Green infrastructure is defined in the EU green infrastructure strategy as ‘a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas with other environmental features designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services. It incorporates green spaces (or blue if aquatic ecosystems are concerned) and other physical features in terrestrial (including coastal) and marine areas. On land, green infrastructure is present in rural and urban settings’.
Unlike single-purpose grey infrastructure, biodiversity-rich green spaces can perform a variety of extremely useful functions, often simultaneously and at very low cost, for the benefit of people, nature and the economy.
In the EU, green infrastructure (GI) includes the Natura 2000 network as its backbone, as well as natural and semi-natural spaces outside Natura 2000, such as parks, private gardens, hedges, vegetated buffer strips along rivers or structure-rich agricultural landscapes with certain features and practices, and artificial features such as green roofs, green walls, or eco-bridges and fish ladders. The annual benefits of eco-system services provided by the Natura 2000 network alone have been estimated at EUR 300 billion across the EU 1 , with the benefits of GI going well beyond.
Target 2 of the EU 2020 biodiversity strategy states that ‘by 2020, ecosystems and their services are maintained and enhanced by establishing green infrastructure and restoring at least 15 % of degraded ecosystems’. Fully meeting this target 2 and restoring Natura 2000 to favourable status could further generate respectively up to 50 000 and 140 000 jobs; and up to EUR 4.2 and 11.1 billion of direct outputs annually; as well as a wider range of benefits from ecosystem services 2 .
The Commission adopted an EU strategy on green infrastructure (GI strategy) in 2013 3 to enhance these economic benefits by attracting greater investment in Europe’s natural capital to achieve its biodiversity objectives by 2020. It included four priority work streams: promoting GI in the main policy areas; improving information, strengthening the knowledge base and promoting innovation; improving access to finance; and contributing to the development of GI projects at EU level.
The strategy envisaged that by the end of 2017, the Commission should review progress on developing GI and publish a report on the lessons learned together with recommendations for future action. The Action Plan for nature, people, and the economy 4 stipulates that this review will further inform the way forward on strategically investing in green infrastructure in the EU. It will also contribute to the final evaluation of the EU 2020 biodiversity strategy.
The review addresses the progress made and challenges encountered at both EU and Member State 5 level in carrying out the Strategy's four priority work streams; draws some lessons and puts forward some suggestions for the further implementation of the strategy.
