Green infrastructure: an integrating concept for regional climate change

The concept of Green Infrastructure (Benedict & McMahon 2002) emphasizes the importance of ensuring the provision of ecosystem goods and services for society and the value of functionally and spatially connected, healthy ecosystems. It is being recognized that Green Infrastructure can contribute to the functional connectivity of the Natura 2000 network by improving landscape permeability and thus could also add to the resilience of ecological networks to climate change (Heller & Zavaleta 2009). In return resilient ecosystems provide many benefits to society e.g. biodiversity, climate change mitigation and adaptation, water management, pest control, pollination, etc.. There is no standard definition of Green Infrastructure and the description is often broad. A broad multifunctional definition has the advantage that many coalitions can be found between nature and other land uses and functions, such as agriculture, forestry and water management. The multifunctional nature of green infrastructure, providing multiple benefits for society, will help the support for and implementation of green infrastructure. Examples of the potentials of green infrastructure as a regional planning tool are given from the CARE project (Climate Adaptation for Rural Areas, part of the Dutch Climate for Knowledge Programme). It is illustrated how the concept of multifunctional green infrastructure on the one hand is important to increase the resilience of the ecological network but at the same time provides opportunities to achieve synergy in regional climate adaptation. We show the strong potentials of the green infrastructure as a unifying concept in regional stakeholder negotiations, as it forms, as part of the ecological network, the spatial main structure for the sustainable provision of ecosystem services.