“Canada’s aging infrastructure has and will increasingly fail in part due to the increased strain from the loss of green infrastructure …The retention, creation and enhancement of natural infrastructure is an important component of any strategy to mitigate … increasingly severe economic and environmental problems.”

Our friends at ALUS have published a submission to the Canadian government regarding its Green Infrastructure initiative.

They suggest “the federal government should:

• Require proposed infrastructure projects to examine the cost and benefit of upstream natural infrastructure, and, when cost-efficient, fund its creation/enhancement and maintenance.
• Identify priority areas (e.g prone to flooding) for integrated planning initiatives with dedicated and sustainable funding mechanisms.
• Establish a general fund for natural infrastructure, similar to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Green Municipal Fund.
• Establish accounting standards to allow the inclusion of natural infrastructure into operations and maintenance budgets. Many jurisdictions, including some in Canada, have made progress on these fronts.”

Here is a link to the full paper where you can read about the economic benefits of green infrastructure including “the ecological goods and services provided by wetlands in the Black River watershed of Lake Simcoe determined that: a dollar invested in [wetland] retention produces $3.66 of value, while a dollar invested in [wetland] restoration of up to 25 per cent of the subwatershed’s wetlands produces $2.01 worth of value.”