Abstract
Water-related green infrastructures (WrGIs), also known as blue infrastructures, and sustainable drainage systems (SuDSs) offer services such as stormwater runoff management, water purification, water storage at the intersection of the built environment, and natural systems by mimicking natural hydrological processes. While several papers document the reliability of such infrastructures in providing a variety of water-related services, few studies investigated the actual behaviour and the attitude of different stakeholders to understand the limitations and barriers in WrGIs/SuDSs implementation. In this paper, we investigated these issues by posing a set of questions to 71 qualified stakeholders in three Italian regions (Toscana, Liguria, and Sardegna) and one French region (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur) in the northwestern Mediterranean. The results of the investigation largely show a lack of knowledge on these innovative solutions, although there is a general interest in their implementation both in the Italian and French regions. Barriers are also constituted by the scarcity of the demonstrators implemented, little knowledge on construction and maintenance costs, the absence of a proper regulatory framework, and of fiscal and financial incentives to support private citizens and companies. We finally suggest tools and soft measures that, in our opinion, may contribute to supporting the implementation of WrGIs/SuDSs, especially in view of adapting Mediterranean territories to the challenges posed by climate change. The results of our analyses may be reasonably up-scaled to the whole Mediterranean coastal region.
Highlights
Water-related green infrastructures (WrGIs), known as blue infrastructures, and sustainable drainage systems (SuDSs) offer services such as stormwater runoff management, water purification, water storage at the intersection of the built environment and natural systems by mimicking natural hydrological processes
The authors highlighted two underlying currents that run across all of the challenges: first, the role of political will as a pre-condition for tackling all challenges holistically; and second, the role of stakeholder engagement in achieving public support, harnessing funding, and maintaining and monitoring GIs in the long term. Starting from such a background, in this contribution we present the results of a survey run by means of interviews and questionnaires in the Mediterranean areas of Italy and France in order to synthesise evidence on the actual behaviour of local authorities towards the uptake of WrGIs/SuDSs and the attitude of relevant stakeholders, involved in their design, maintenance, or uptake, towards their implementation
We found the absence of any type of SuDS in five local administrations, while in three background, that is recently given under the name of WrGIs/SuDSs, to infrastructures such rainwater cases the respondents were unable to provide an answer to this regard
Summary
Water-related green infrastructures (WrGIs), known as blue infrastructures, and sustainable drainage systems (SuDSs) offer services such as stormwater runoff management, water purification, water storage at the intersection of the built environment and natural systems by mimicking natural hydrological processes. Some examples of such systems are: rainwater harvesting systems [1,2]. A large part of these studies generally refer to green infrastructures (GIs) as a whole (which include WrGIs/SuDSs), intended as (semi-)natural multifunctional (in relation to the ecosystem services they may provide) infrastructures, and strategically developed in networks [30].
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