Turning Blue, Green and Gray: Opportunities for Blue-Green Infrastructure in the Philippines

Abstract

Nature-based solutions represent a critical concept that harnesses natural systems to provide essential services for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. As a nature-based solution, blue-green infrastructure takes advantage of nature’s innate ability to substitute for or strengthen infrastructure systems by preserving, enhancing, or restoring a natural system's elements to build high quality, resilient and lower-cost infrastructure. The chapter describes how ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction, ecosystem-based adaptation, and blue-green infrastructure are implemented in the Philippines, including the policies that support them, the status of implementation, and through a case study in Polillo, Quezon, Philippines. Findings show that despite policies in place to support and advance the mainstreaming of nature-based solutions in the country, the environment's cross-cutting nature as a sector makes enforcement and implementation of programs, plans, and activities extremely challenging. Implementing nature-based solutions in the Philippines has so far been undertaken as a response to environmental challenges. More than being reactive, a proactive focus on nature-based solutions for prevention, mitigation, and rehabilitation is needed. The science and evidence for blue-green infrastructure would need to be strengthened to inform decision-making better, gain political commitment at all levels, secure funding and private sector engagement, and ultimately advance its implementation.