All London Green Grid as Nature-Based Solutions for Urban Resilience

Abstract

In the face of the heightened threat and risks of climate change in urban areas, nature-based solutions (NbS) have gained attention as an ecosystem-based integrated concept to handle resultant economic, social, and environmental challenges, while building and enhancing urban resilience. The solutions are actions that are “inspired by, supported by or copied from nature” to “protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems” so as to handle societal challenges, resulting in a better quality of life and biodiversity benefits (European Commission, Towards an EU research and innovation policy agenda for nature-based solutions & re-naturing cities: Final report of the horizon 2020 expert group on nature-based solutions and re-naturing cities. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2015; Cohen-Shacham et al., Nature-based solutions to address global societal challenges. IUCN, Gland, 2016). These integrated approaches have been applied to urban ecosystems while bringing cost-effectiveness and multifunctional benefits such as public health, biodiversity conservation, social cohesion, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. Considering that, this chapter attempted to define urban resilience and NbS, along with its relationship to urban planners, practitioners, and researchers to understand the terms more clearly. It also demonstrated how NbS has been applied in Greater London, through the All London Green Grid (ALGG), a policy framework to implement green infrastructure across Greater London in line with the London Plan, the local spatial development strategy. Despite its challenges (e.g., lack of funding or political will), the ALGG initiative in coordination with the spatial development strategy and other relevant strategies has shown a bottom-up approach, and created a collaborative/partnership governance, bringing multifunctional benefits.