Community-driven sustainable green infrastructure (GI) indicators to plan an eco-friendlier and climate-resilient city-state in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan.

Abstract

The proliferation of climate-induced stressors has deterred countries' green spaces (GS), which in turn degrade and deplete natural green barriers. Hence, Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) modelling is grabbing global attention perceiving it as a nature-based mitigation/adaptation strategy to enhance the resilience of urban areas to fight climatic risks. UGI protects and improves the socio-ecological wellness of urban and rural regions. This research intends to investigate thirteen sustainable UGI indicators and their functional linkage with the five vital taxonomies of nature-based green solutions (at the neighborhood level) under a community participatory (CP) approach; out of ten GS elements and twenty-two sustainable UGI indicators developed by the author in his earlier research study [2-5]. It is to develop a sustainable UGI indicator-based framework (tailored to the native-built context) for climate-resilient urbanisation. The results of the in-depth household survey (192 questionnaires), executed in three KP districts, Charsadda, Peshawar, and Mardan, and results were generated through Relative Importance Index (RII) and Interquartile Range Technique (IQR) show a very good level of coefficient alpha (α) value, (α = 0.7) — an acceptable threshold level [6, 7]. Furthermore, this study acknowledges key GS taxonomies that have achieved RII value ≥ 0.72. This performs a pivotal role in quality improvement and strengthening the resilience (health) of the respective UGI indicators. This scientific research study provides a foundation for an eco-regional paradigm in KP territory that paves the way for an effective implementation of green urbanism to naturally ameliorate the vulnerability to potential climatic stresses (like flooding, drought, the UHI effect) and disastrous impacts on the socio-ecological wellness. Keywords: sustainable green infrastructure (GI) indicators; participatory planning (PP); nature-based green initiatives; climate change (CC); socio-ecological wellness; KP, Pakistan