Local Perspectives on Green Resilient Settlements in Pakistan

Abstract

AbstractThe wave of climatic hazards has hampered countries green infrastructure planning. As a countermeasure, Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) modelling has emerged as an adaptation strategy to enhance the resilience of the urban areas to fight the potential effects of climatic risks. It protects and improves the urban eco-system, human health and wellbeing, like in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province of Pakistan. This research aimed to determine sustainable UGI planning indicators based on local stakeholder’s perspectives. It is to develop a UGI indicator-based framework for climate-resilient urbanization. The results of the online expert’s survey were based on 172 questionnaires. The relative importance index (RII) and interquartile range technique (IQR) were utilized to examine the data. The result shows a very good level of coefficient alpha (α) value, higher than α = 0.7, which is an acceptable threshold level (Cortina in J. Appl. Psychol., 1993; Peterson in J. Consum. Res., 1994). Furthermore, in this paper, we acknowledge key green elements, that have achieved RII value ≥ 0.75. This performs a pivotal role in quality improvement and strengthening the health of the respective UGI indicators. This study calls for building a new cultural paradigm in the KP region that supports green growth development to naturally minimize the vulnerability to urban flooding hazards and disastrous impacts on the ecosystem functions, and human well-being.KeywordsClimate changeAdaptationGreen infrastructureUrban eco-systemPakistan