Benefits of Green Infrastructure

Green infrastructure provides a diversity of public and private functions and values that address both natural and human needs and benefit the environment and communities. Green infrastructure systems help protect and restore naturally functioning ecosystems and provide a framework for future development. In doing so, they provide a diversity of ecological, social, and economic functions and benefits:

Enriched habitat and biodiversity
Maintenance of natural landscape processes
Cleaner air and water
Increased recreational and transportation opportunities
Improved health
Better connection to nature and sense of place

Well planned green space has also been shown to increase property values and decrease the costs of public infrastructure and public services, including the costs for stormwater management and water treatment systems.

Investing in green infrastructure can often be more cost effective than conventional public works projects. For example, in the 1990s New York City avoided the need to spend $6–$8 billion on new water filtration and treatment plants by instead purchasing and protecting watershed land in the Catskill Mountains for about $1.5 billion. Likewise Arnold, Missouri, has dramatically reduced the cost to taxpayers of disaster relief and flood damage repair by purchasing threatened properties and creating a greenway in the flood plain.

Two nonprofit organizations, the Center for Neighborhood Technology and Urban Logic, believe a shift in governmental accounting rules may help standardize these examples. In 1999, the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) issued comprehensive changes in state and local government financial reporting. The standards, known as “GASB- 34,” require governments to develop, maintain and present capital accounts in their balance sheets. The two organizations are working with economists, accountants, bond financiers and others to explore using GASB-34 to help capture our natural environment’s inherent capital.

Just as all forms of built infrastructure are promoted for the wide range of public and private benefits they provide, we need to promote Green Infrastructure systems actively for the wide range of essential ecological and social functions, values and benefits that accrue to people and nature.