There has been great progress in ecosystem services assessments and natural capital accounting. However, what evidence, tools, and processes do Canadian municipalities need as owners and managers of 60% of Canada’s infrastructure to recognize the value of natural infrastructure for future long-term resilience of our communities and evaluate it alongside traditional grey options?
During the webinar, our panelists showcased examples of the return on investment for natural infrastructure projects and discussed options for cost recovery, including specific project examples from Canadian municipalities such as the floodplain naturalization work done by the City of Grand Forks.
Natural infrastructure can enhance existing municipal assets and make them more multi-functional. Many municipalities in Canada, such as the City of Vancouver, B.C., are faced with aging infrastructure and an asset replacement deficit. One argument used by the City of Vancouver to support more natural infrastructure projects for stormwater management was that the city was not planning to create completely new assets (with the associated planning and construction costs) but rather to enhance existing assets and make them more multi-functional. For example, bioretention systems are installed in areas that are already designated as landscaped spaces, and permeable pavements replace conventional pavement.
While natural infrastructure can cost less than conventional projects, lifecycle costs can vary. The key is to remember that natural infrastructure aims to achieve more and therefore provides additional value. The most obvious approach to recognizing the value of natural infrastructure is to compare its costs to an engineered alternative based on available estimates. Natural infrastructure often costs less because it can become self-functioning—for example, the naturalized floodplain in the City of Grand Forks, B.C., does not involve inspection costs like dams. However, construction and maintenance costs can vary significantly between projects and, in some cases, may be higher than conventional solutions. That said, these projects achieve more, offering multiple co-benefits such as habitat protection, carbon sequestration, and recreational opportunities. As Robb Lukes, Associate Director of the City of Vancouver Green Infrastructure Implementation Branch, puts it: “You can’t get something for nothing. Everyone wants us to prove that it is going to cost less than a conventional approach, but we are trying to do more.”
Benefit quantification and monetization are important for recognizing the value of natural infrastructure, although they are not always the primary drivers for decision-making. In certain cases, if quantification tools or approaches are not yet consistently available, it may be sufficient to simply acknowledge the additional benefits of natural infrastructure compared to traditional approaches when making planning decisions. Furthermore, when risks to communities increase, requiring urgent adaptation, there may not be time for complex business cases; however, it may be clear that natural infrastructure offers a viable adaptation approach. When large-scale flood protection was not feasible with the available temporary solutions, the City of Grand Forks turned to a floodplain naturalization and habitat offset project as an effective way to mitigate increasing flood risk.
There is an appetite for a calculator adapted to the Canadian context to quantify and monetize costs and benefits of natural stormwater solutions, similar to the US-based GSI Impact Calculator. Infrastructure assessment methodologies like the Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi) developed by IISD can also help highlight and monetize previously unrecognized economic, social and environmental risks and externalities of natural and grey infrastructure projects and help decision-makers make investments into sustainable projects. To date, SAVi has been applied to more than 40 projects around the world, including two Canadian natural infrastructure projects Pelly’s Lake and Stephenfield Reservoir.
This webinar took place on November 26, 2024. Watch the full recording below or on YouTube.
Graham Watt is a land use, infrastructure, and environmental planner with coordination and leadership roles in land use and watershed planning projects, emergency management programs, community-led disaster recovery, natural asset management, and long-range community planning. He is currently the Manager of Strategic Initiatives / Flood Recovery for the City of Grand Forks, where he leads flood risk reduction and non-structural flood mitigation projects as well as long-range planning initiatives and capital project planning. Previously, he was Senior Planner with the City of Grand Forks, Project Coordinator for the Kettle River Watershed Management Plan with the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary, and Basin Planner with the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance. Graham is also a director with the Grand Forks Search and Rescue Society and is active in the training program and winter rescue team.
Robb Lukes is the Associate Director of the City of Vancouver Green Infrastructure Implementation Branch where he leads the program to implement green infrastructure in the right-of-way and other public spaces. He has 20 years of experience in stormwater management policy, planning, design, and construction in the US and Canada. He has previously worked on green infrastructure projects and programs in Washington D.C., Toronto, and New York City.
Michail Kapetanakis is a research analyst for the Infrastructure team in the Economic Law and Policy Program at the International Institute for Sustainable Development. He has over 5 years of cross-sectoral experience in sustainability consulting and economic analysis for transport, cities and environmental projects.
Michail works on applying the Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi) methodology to sustainable transport projects and policies in countries including India, Indonesia, Colombia, Senegal and Kazakhstan, working with NGOs and local partners and stakeholders. He also works with the Nature-Based Infrastructure (NBI) Global Resource Centre, helping to apply the SAVi methodology to NBI projects across the world, through modelling, writing and data sourcing for reports.
Elizabeth (Liz) Shearer is a Network Coordinator for Climate West and holds a Masters in Business Administration and a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of Winnipeg. She worked most recently as the Executive Assistant to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change for the Province of Manitoba, where she assisted in standing up the new Minister’s Office and connecting with a wide network of stakeholders in their first year. Previously she was the Manitoba Organizer for the Canadian Federation of Students, a bilingual organization, and the Sustainable Transportation Coordinator for the Green Action Centre.
Liz has been part of many campaigns and initiatives that organize stakeholder groups on important issues within the environmental sector, arts, labour, student movement and with political parties. She enjoys travelling, photography, taking in live music and spending time with her husband and young daughter. Liz is based on Treaty 1 Territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
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