“Green infrastructure is our nation’s natural life support system.”

Adela Backiel, director of sustainable development at USDA, was describing the approach that integrates environmental stewardship, economic development, and community vitality. USDA employees across the Department are participating in this effort.

She pointed out that ‘green infrastructure’ focuses on ‘working lands’ and open spaces--which include woodlands, wetlands, waterways, wildlife habitats, parks, greenways, and other natural features of the landscape. “The idea is to foster healthy, functioning communities,” she explained.

“Sustainability” refers to the meshing of the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of development.

According to Peggy Harwood, an urban and community forestry program manager with the Forest Service, one factor which distinguishes ‘green infrastructure’ from related approaches is that it helps reduce susceptibility to floods, fires, and other natural events while conserving working landscapes and open space for a variety of purposes including recreation.

Another difference is that, unlike more conventional approaches to open space planning, it focuses on conservation values and the services provided by natural systems in concert with--instead of in opposition to--land development, growth management, and ‘built infrastructure.’

In contrast, she noted, the built or ‘gray infrastructure’ includes roads, buildings, parking lots, and utilities that society builds out of concrete, asphalt, masonry, steel, and other materials. “Communities depend on both forms of infrastructure--green and gray--and they need to find ways to incorporate both into existing and new development,” Harwood advised.

“‘Green infrastructure’ is not an entirely new idea,” observed Avery Patillo, a community planner with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. “In fact, architects, planners, naturalists, and landscape architects have written about our interdependence with nature,” he said. “Plus, they’ve long advocated the value and importance of the natural environment and its function to the quality of human life.”

But the difference now, he emphasized, is that the concept of ‘green infrastructure’ “blends environmental, social, and economic factors to create more vital communities.” Examples, he said, include the Maryland Greenprint Program, the Florida Greenways Project, and the Chicago Wilderness effort--which all incorporate the principles of ‘green infrastructure.’

Patillo is an instructor of a course in ‘green infrastructure.’ USDA helped to develop that course--originally a brainchild of The Conservation Fund, one of USDA’s partners in its ‘green infrastructure’ initiatives. The course is now offered at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

The course that Patillo teaches is part of efforts by the National Conservation Training Center to provide training to conservation professionals--both in and out of the federal government--to help them conserve fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats. Over 120 persons have attended various versions of the course since that training began in 2001.

In turn, the course in ‘green infrastructure’ is also an example of USDA’s efforts to promote that concept. Backiel said that those efforts grew out of the charge given to USDA’s Council on Sustainable Development from Secretary’s Memorandum 9500-6 dated Sept. 13, 1996 and titled “Sustainable Development.” “That charge,” she explained, “was to find a lasting balance between the economic, environmental, and social components of the Department’s mission.”

As a second example, USDA agencies are partnering with other federal, state, and local agencies and tribal governments, plus private, non-profit organizations. Harwood, who organizes and tracks partnership activities, said the goal is to help plan and implement ‘green infrastructure’ activities in local communities.

As a third example, ‘green infrastructure’ work is being done by USDA’s National Agroforestry Center in Lincoln, Neb., a joint venture of FS and NRCS since 1995. Its staffers are taking their years of research on conservation buffer designs and applications in agricultural settings and are now applying that to water quality and quantity issues in both rural and urban communities. “We’re helping those communities blend their ‘gray’ and ‘green’ infrastructure together,” underscored Greg Ruark, director of the National Agroforestry Center.

For instance, in 2001 the Center became involved with “Green Topeka,” a project to better manage stormwater runoff in Topeka, Kan.--while, in the process, improve the city’s green spaces. The idea was to avoid the more conventional approach of simply relying on concrete pipes to carry Topeka’s stormwater downstream to other communities. Instead, the goal was to incorporate ‘green technologies’ to moderate runoff peaks, protect area rivers and lakes from contaminants in the stormwater, enhance wildlife habitat, and provide for outdoor recreation.

“The Center’s specific role,” Ruark said, “was to help the city ‘design with nature’ by putting the right tree in the right place to do the job.”

As a fourth example, Backiel said that, “Green infrastructure concepts are resonating with people throughout the world, in addition to the U.S.” For instance, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002, Ruark conducted a course on ‘green infrastructure.’ Then, at the first-ever African Sustainable Cities Congress, also held in Johannesburg, Rich Straight, an FS agroforester at the Center, shared his ideas on “how green infrastructure can help reconnect urban and rural places.” Finally, in May 2003 Patillo was part of a team that conducted another course on ‘green infrastructure’ at a session of the United Nations’ Commission on Sustainable Development in New York City.

“Through green infrastructure,” affirmed Backiel, “we at USDA are helping communities to make informed choices that mesh social, economic, and environmental considerations--and lead them to a sustainable future.” •