Corralling the evidence about the value of Green Infrastructure - Martin Moss. Senior Advisor - Green Infrastructure Operations England.
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Corralling the evidence about the value of Green Infrastructure Martin Moss. Senior Advisor – Green Infrastructure Operations England.
Flow of discussion.
• Part 1 - What do we mean by GI?
• Part 2 - What are we trying to do
with it?
• Part 3 - How do we plan for GI?
• Part 4 - What are the Benefits?
• Part 5 - What is the value?
• Part 6 – Examples of the
application of GI planning
concepts.
Part 1 – What do we mean by GI?
• It can be big or small, it’s
sometimes green but it’s • Green infrastructure should be
considered as a critical infrastructure.
always an infrastructure ! It needs to be planned, managed and
invested in at different spatial scales
as with any other critical infrastructure.
• Most definitions focus on the
• Natural Economy NW – 2010.
components and parts of GI.
• Green infrastructure needs to be
• But it’s the whole being greater regarded as infrastructure in its own
than the sum of the parts that right, assisting with flood protection,
water storage and recycling, and
counts. providing shade, new pedestrian and
cycling routes as well as space for
recreation and biodiversity.
• It’s an infrastructure – there to
• London Infrastructure Plan 2050 –
do a job. consultation (2014).
Part 2 – What are we trying to do with GI? • Develop a living infrastructure that provides a range of services and benefits that; • A. Contribute to the sustainable development of places and spaces. • B. Support communities – healthy and liveable places. • C. Provide for the needs of wildlife – the other species with whom we share this space.
It’s a big and complex thing - You need to talk !
• You cannot do this alone ! • “Green Infrastructure is
relevant to you because it
• The benefits are broad and so involves every organisation
are the beneficiaries. that has an interest in
Cumbria’s economy,
• The beneficiaries also have a environment and people. It
voice. provides wide-ranging
• Partnership is key to benefits from inward
developing shared aspirations investment to health and
and a joint work forward. well-being. But it requires a
co-ordinated approach from
those organisations in order
to realise its potential”.
• Cumbria GI Investment Strategy
March 2014.
Part 3 – How do we plan for GI ? 4 Activities and 5 Steps. • The Four activities. • Communication – policy, politics and ownership. • Planning – answering the questions. • Investment – investing in the value. • Delivery – It happens !
The Five Steps.
Why plan for GI? – To meet policy.
• The NPPF provides the • 114. Local planning authorities
national level agenda. should:
• 109. The planning system • set out a strategic approach in
should contribute to and their Local Plans, planning
enhance the natural and local positively for the creation,
environment (including) by: protection, enhancement and
management of networks of
• recognising the wider benefits biodiversity and green
of ecosystem services; infrastructure;
Why plan for GI? – To Integrate environmental
interests.
• GI Planning is a means of • A network of green
identifying how the natural environment components that;
environment can help deliver a
variety of social and economic • Exist within their landscape
objectives. context.
• Deliver ecosystem services
• It is also a means of integrating (aka – GI functions and
a range of spatial benefits).
environmental interests. • Provide the ecological
network.
• Enable access to nature.
Why plan for GI? – To set spatial policy and
proposals for investment and delivery.
• Benefits.
• Values.
• Brigading the evidence about
GI allows us to develop a • Understanding value is closely
spatial understanding of the aligned with investment case
benefits of GI. making.
• What the overall resource is. • What do we get back?
• What it is doing.
• What we need it to do. • Cost benefit assessment.
• What spatial policy is needed
to maintain, enhance and/or • The case for maintaining the
create new. infrastructure.Part 4 – What are the Benefits of GI? • Various GI Benefit categorisations. Mostly based on literature reviews of the evidence for what GI does. • Benefits generally considered to be quite high level, policy related outcomes of a GI system. • The system components deliver a variety of Functions that combine to give a high level Benefit.
Type – Function - Benefit – Value.
EVAPO- CLIMATE CHANGE £ REDUCED
TRANSPIRATION ADAPTATION - AIRCONDITIONING
URBAN COOLING COSTS/HEALTH
CARBON CLIMATE CHANGE £ MARKET VALUE
SEQUESTRATION MITIGATION OF CO2 STORED
PARTICULATE IMPROVED AIR £ REDUCED
FILTERING QUALITY HEALTH COSTS
GI TYPE / Feature GI FUNCTION GI BENEFIT GI VALUE (£)An example categorisation.
• Climate change adaptation and
mitigation
• Flood alleviation and water
management
• Quality of place
• Health and well-being
• Land and property values
• Economic growth and investment
• Labour productivity
• Tourism
• Recreation and leisure
• Land and biodiversity
• Products from the land
• Stronger communities.What does the evidence say?
Relating Ecosystem Services to GI Benefits. Where science meets policy?
Part 5 – What is the value of GI?
• An Economist Would Say …
• Benefits from environmental
features are identified through
logic chain analysis, or “theory
of change”.
Change in
New/improved Change in
environmental
environmental benefit to
service
feature people
provided
• We can talk of “economic
• But not all benefits behave the value” and “economic impact”.
same.Important distinction – what sort of economic
benefit is it?
ECONOMIC VALUE ECONOMIC IMPACT
The effect of a change on the The effect of a change on the size of
happiness and welfare of society, the traded economy, commonly
regardless of whether this effect is measured using GDP
felt through the market.
Low
High impact
valueA more general understanding – how do we get
them?
• In a non-technical sense
economic benefits are • Indirect – societal values or
sometimes described as; supporting transactional
economy.
• Direct.
• Indirect. • Cost reduction – reduction of
• Cost reduction. heating / water bills, better
• Risk management. resource efficiency (cost to
profit).
• Direct – cash economy –
transactions for goods and • Risk management – eg
services (requires interaction reduced flood risks (profit to
between green and business cost).
infrastructure).The evidence base – Micro Economic Benefits of Investing in the Environment. • Extensive, increasing, multi- • Thorough review of literature disciplinary – but still early on the benefits of investment in days. the natural environment. • Many research questions are • Over 100 new pieces of being identified as gaps in evidence. understanding become • Simplified format. apparent. • BUT … • New chapters on; • Natural England have • Consumer Spending, compiled a broad literature review. • Pollination and • First published in 2012 – • Pest Control. MEBIE 2 published 2014.
Evidence can be stronger - Air quality
New/improved Improvement
Improvement
environmental in human and
in air quality
feature plant health
Air pollution poses significant risks to human, plant
and ecosystem health. Evidence is strong that
vegetation, particularly trees, can contribute to air
quality improvements.
• 547 ha. of mixed greenspace within a 10 x 10
km square of East London could significantly
reduce pollution with an estimated effect of two
deaths and two hospital admissions avoided
per year (Tiwary, Sinnett et al. 2009).Or weaker - Labour productivity
Improvements
New/improved Improvements
in attention;
environmental in employee
reduced
feature productivity
fatigue
Although plausible, there is a lack of evidence to suggest that the
natural environment directly contributes to improvements in labour
productivity.
It may contribute indirectly through improvements to worker health.How can benefits be valued ?
• An emerging discipline, still • CAVAT: Capital Asset Value for
Amenity Trees;
very early days.
• Green Infrastructure NorthWest‟s
• A range of existing toolkits. Green Infrastructure Valuation Toolkit
• Guide to valuing Green Infrastructure
from the Centre for Neighbourhood
• Tend to be either; Technology Chicago;
• Broad ranging but lack • Health Economic Assessment Tool for
robustness. walking and cycling (HEAT);
• Narrow range with higher • Helliwell;
• i-Tree Design;
levels of robustness.
• i-Tree Eco;
• i-Tree Streets, and
• NE review 2013. • InVEST: Integrated Valuation of
Environmental Services and Tradeoffs.Part 6 – An example of local GI planning.
• So how are these concepts
applied.
• It involves brigading the
evidence of both the benefits
conceptually and the value of
those benefits to investment.
• Spatial evidence of;
• The GI resource.
• What it’s doing – function.
• Assessment of needs.
• Brigade to create spatially
articulated strategy.Typology – Eg; Manchester City
• Typology maps – a snapshot
of the existing resource.
• Overall – Manchester City is
58 % GI.
• 31% private or domestic garden space
• 19% rough grassland
• 11% general amenity land
• 9% woodland
• 6% public park or garden
• 6% outdoor sports facilities
• 2% blue infrastructure – rivers,
canals, lakes and ponds
• 16% cemeteries, development land,
street treesBeyond Green Space – EG; Liverpool.
Functionality – Liverpool.
Functions mapped in Liverpool work.
• Accessible water storage • Noise absorption
• Biofuels production • Opportunity to hear more natural sound
• Carbon storage • Pest and disease control
• Coastal storm protection • Physical movement barrier
• Community cohesion • Pollination
• Connection with local environment • Pollutant removal from soil/water
• Corridor for wildlife • Providing jobs
• Culture • Recreation – private
• Encouraging green travel • Recreation – public
• Evaporative cooling • Recreation – public with restrictions
• Flow reduction through surface roughness • Shading from the sun
• Food production • Soil stabilisation
• Habitat for wildlife • Timber production
• Heritage • Trapping air pollutants
• Inaccessible water storage • Visual contribution to landscape character
• Learning • Water conveyance
• Water infiltration
• Water interception
• Wind shelterDeveloping a spatial understanding of needs.
Needs met – Needs not met.
Brigading the benefits – creating strategy. • Liverpool City – Health a key driver behind interest in GI. • 8 deferent strategic interventions identified – partnership. • But where to target resources and focus effort? Where is the greatest need? Where to get biggest return on investment? • Spatial strategy and targeting.
And finally … a look forward.
• The understanding of GI as an
GI infrastructure is increasing, • We still need to get better at
but a long way to go yet – its communicating the benefits and
inclusion in consideration values - especially to
needs to become automatic. economically focused audiences.
• We are getting better and more
• We are expanding and sophisticated at GI Planning.
improving the evidence base That’s good, but it does get very
for benefits and values – major technical.
academic area of interest. But
large evidence gaps and a real • We need to improve how the often
need to improve quality and complex GI Planning outputs can
availability. be applied by no-technical
audiences. (“It’s good … but I
don’t understand it!”).“You wouldn’t plan without considering the need for
transport, power, water supply or sewers. Surely we
shouldn’t plan without considering the need for GI – the 5th
Critical infrastructure - either”.
GI Solutions to pinch point issues in NW England - Natural Economy NW –
2009.
Thank you.You can also read
