Rethinking ‘future nature’ through a transatlantic research collaboration: climate-adapted urban green infrastructure for human wellbeing and biodiversity

With climate change arguably the greatest threat facing our planet, we are witnessing unprecedented losses of biodiversity and growing human health challenges. The need to prioritise urban green infrastructure (UGI) has never been so great. As two researchers from the UK and Brazil, we draw on recent research evidence and contrasting examples from the UK, Brazil and Italy, demonstrating how enlightened approaches to UGI planning, design and delivery can mitigate and adapt to climate change, support human health and wellbeing and enhance biodiversity. We highlight the need to make decisions across scales and the value of partnership working across sectors. We emphasise the need to identify synergies and trade-offs between climate-resilience, biodiversity and human wellbeing objectives. Synergies generate positive opportunities to provide multiple benefits, whereas trade-offs require prioritisation. These case studies provide transferable precedent learning for planners, designers and managers of multifunctional ‘future nature’ in urban areas throughout the world.