Natural infrastructure

SCIENCE MATTERS by David Suzuki

• Across Canada, towns and cities face a one-two punch: aging infrastructure and the extreme weather climate change brings. Unless we do something, many of our roads, railways, transit lines, bridges, stormwater pipes and other built structures could become obsolete.

Our newly elected federal government took up the challenge with a campaign pledge to double infrastructure investments from $65 billion to nearly $125 billion over the next 10 years. Ontario has committed to spending $130 billion over the same time period and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has also promised a hefty infrastructure stimulus package.

While these political commitments are long overdue, we shouldn’t lose sight of less-expensive and longer-lasting solutions to many of our infrastructure needs, like planting trees in urban areas for stormwater management and other services. But higher levels of government must also fund and participate in urban forest strategies to ensure that trees are promoted in our ever-densifying urban centres.

We often take trees and green spaces for granted, but we shouldn’t. They clean and cool air, filter and regulate water, reduce energy use and protect homes and businesses during storms. Healthy street trees can lengthen the lifespan of built infrastructure like roads and sidewalks by shading them and reducing effects of weathering and they provide significant human health benefits. This summer, using data from Toronto, David Suzuki Foundation Ontario director Faisal Moola and his academic colleagues found that adding 10 trees to a block can produce health benefits equivalent to a $10,000 salary raise or being seven years younger.

Despite their enormous value to society, urban forest canopies are stressed and in decline in many parts of the country. Unfortunately, urban forest stewardship varies widely across the country. Few municipalities have the necessary financial resources to manage and protect their urban forests in the face of growing and diverse threats.

To help resolve this, provincial and federal governments need to update the definition of infrastructure to include green infrastructure such as trees, rain gardens and permeable surfaces and allow municipalities to spend money to develop and maintain these assets.

Higher levels of government must also update the standards by which municipalities report and manage their government assets to include trees, parks, wetlands, woodlots and public aquifers. That would facilitate setting minimum provincial standards for maintenance of critical green infrastructure and would improve management practices. We have provincial standards for grey infrastructure such as roads, so why not for green infrastructure? With the help of the David Suzuki Foundation, the tiny town of Gibsons, BC, has already started on this path.

If we’re going to build, let’s build green. Green infrastructure complements and reduces costs associated with traditional grey concrete, steel and asphalt infrastructure. It also provides a multitude of co-benefits that improve the health and well being of residents and makes our communities more beautiful and pleasant.

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Excerpted from the original article. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Ontario and Northern Canada Director Faisal Moola and the Green Infrastructure Ontario Coalition. Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Editor’s note: David Roberts, brother to Common Ground’s publisher, planted many trees, including the beautiful towering tree at the northwest corner of 4th and Burrard in Vancouver.

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