Policy instruments for green infrastructure

Developing a green infrastructure is a major environmental policy ambition in many countries around the world. However, green infrastructure objectives can vary, especially in terms of requirements on the spatial allocation of conservation sites. In this paper, we investigate which policy instruments are being used to pursue green infrastructure objectives with differing spatial needs. We do this by reviewing a set of 127 papers. Our findings suggest that price-type instruments are often used for green infrastructure objectives that have no particular requirements on the spatial allocation of conservation sites. Procedural instruments are commonly applied when the aim is to build a green infrastructure with a contiguous but spread allocation of sites. While spatial planning and the development of financing strategies were commonly mentioned for green infrastructure with high connectivity requirements, we were surprised to find little use of incentive mechanisms that internalize the benefit of clustering and pass it on to landowners. We suggest that such incentive mechanisms are underutilized and call for more pilots and case study work, for example on agglomeration bonus and threshold payments for green infrastructure development. We further call for more research on green infrastructure policies in the global South.

Automated summary

Developing a green infrastructure is an important environmental policy goal in many countries around the world. Different countries have different requirements on the spatial allocation of conservation sites for green infrastructure. Price-type and procedural instruments are commonly used, but the utilization of incentive mechanisms that internalize the benefit of clustering is relatively low. There is a need for more studies on incentive mechanisms and green infrastructure policies in the global South.