Is the term Green Infrastructure a positive development for urban foresters? Find out in this blog post by Clive Davies, research fellow at the Newcastle University and the director of MD2 Consulting Ltd, where he is an international advisor & enabler supporting clients in all aspects of green infrastructure planning, urban & peri-urban forestry.
Green Infrastructure has become a really popular planning term in the last 10 years and has come to dominate the discourse on urban green. I have been reflecting on this for some time and have concluded that it is a positive development for practitioners and researchers engaged in urban forestry. Why?
The answer is that in urban areas where tree cover is low urban forestry has often struggled to get accepted as a term of importance. Yet some of the same urban areas where urban forest recognition is limited are now beginning to plan for green infrastructure. This creates an opportunity to promote trees and urban woodlands as functional green infrastructure (GI) and embed the concepts of urban forestry in GI plans and projects – surely this is an opportunity. Of course for this to happen urban areas need urban forest advocates to make a strong case. Could that be you?
I also see a developing role for the EFUF partnership; if EFUF can produce authoritative, persuasive and relevant information on urban forestry targeted at professionals working on green infrastructure planning then we have a powerful new tool to promote the role of urban trees and urban woodland. At the EFUF Brussels/Waterloo Forum in 2015, there was discussion about creating a digital platform called EFUF 2.0. This promotional role on urban forestry as a crucial part of green infrastructure could be one of the functions of the digital platform.
Recently attention has been focused on Nature Based Solutions and the role green infrastructure plays in this. If you haven’t read the report “Towards an EU Research and Innovation policy agenda for Nature-Based Solutions & Re-Naturing Cities” then I recommend it to you. Urban forestry can make a huge contribution to nature based solutions and this is recognised, take this abstract from the EU report as an example: Planting trees to reduce air pollution and improve health.
- Objective/Theme: Air pollution is a serious problem with more people moving to towns and cities combined with increased traffic.
- Solutions/measures: There are a range of measures including the important one of reducing the source of the pollution. It has become increasingly clear that appropriate tree planting can be effective in reducing levels of air pollution in urban areas.
- Short description (rcommendation): Provide incentives to encourage the planning of lines of trees in areas where high densities of pollutants and people coincide.
Reports of this kind can support arguments for urban forestry investment. So even in the era of austerity gripping Europe, there are new arguments we can put forward to promote urban forestry.
Author: Clive Davies, Strategic Urban Forestry & Green Infrastructure Consultant
Featured photo by mpstudio123.
The #EFUF2016 blog 
Clive, very much agree with you here about the use of the term green infrastructure. I think it is also useful to see urban forestry as an integral component within a wider network of connected habitats and greenspace types – historically foresters have not always appreciated the complimentary role of open habitats within urban green networks. The fact that GI also considers the need to deliver diverse ecosystem services is also a significant step forward – Ian Whitehead
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