Urban Green Infrastructure: Opportunities and Challenges at the European Scale

Investing in the deployment of Green Infrastructure (GI) can provide many different environmental, societal and economic benefits. High-quality, biodiversity-rich blue-green areas increase land sustainability and help to solve many challenges, such as air pollution, noise, climate change impacts, heat waves, floods and public health concerns. In order to design and manage an efficient GI, there is a need for consistent multi-scale and inter-sectorial GI-related policies. During the last six years, the Commission developed and implemented a set of initiatives to sustain the deployment of multi-scale GI. This chapter provides an overview of the most recent documents and initiatives released in the framework of EU biodiversity strategy to 2020, the EU Strategy on Green Infrastructure and the Action plan for nature, people and the economy.