Green Infrastructure’s Role in Climate Change Adaptation: Summarizing the Existing Research in the Most Benefited Policy Sectors

Extreme climate change is today’s world’s most pressing and challenging problem. Increases in greenhouse gas emissions, the warming of the atmosphere and ocean, increased precipitation, rising sea levels, and temperature rise are the major effects of climate change that significantly affect urban infrastructure. Green Infrastructure (GI) is an increasingly acknowledged tool for climate change adaptation that contributes to sustainable urban and rural development. This study reviewed 111 research articles to identify and summarize the research findings about the role of GI in climate change adaptation. Furthermore, the research articles are grouped into three sectors with the most benefits of green infrastructure in climate change adaptation: mitigating urban heat islands, increasing ecosystem resilience, and flood risk management. The literature was further divided according to the developed or utilized strategies and techniques. The findings suggest that the topic of GI’s role in climate change adaptation is very current and it has been studied frequently in the last five years.