Natural Infrastructure for Water
We empower governments, businesses, utilities, and communities to enhance water security by investing in “natural infrastructure,” like forests and wetlands, as part of a portfolio of smart solutions to growing water challenges.
Water is critical for economic development around the world—from the parched farmlands of eastern Africa, to growing cities across India and Brazil that rely on hydropower for reliable electricity, to communities in the western United States that continue to grapple with water scarcity and catastrophic wildfires. Intensifying water stress demands a new paradigm for water resources management that prioritizes holistic and integrated solutions. At the center of such an approach is natural infrastructure.
Natural infrastructure uses landscape management strategies like restoration, conservation and sustainable management to provide essential services like clean and abundant water supply, aquifer recharge and flood control. WRI is dedicated to scaling up these smart and cost-effective strategies, which support rural communities while also enabling sustainable development in an increasingly urbanizing world. We leverage WRI’s geospatial mapping (e.g., Aqueduct and Global Forest Watch) and economic expertise to track water risks; unveil natural infrastructure opportunities; and inform, finance, and scale smart strategies to secure water resources.
Through our projects spanning across North and South America, Africa, and Asia, we convene and empower champions at all levels of decision-making. We provide the cutting-edge data and best practice guidance to put natural infrastructure into action. We steward collective learning through extensive networks of water utility managers, conservationists, businesses, financial institutions and governments united behind a common goal: to enhance water security and bolster economic development through landscape restoration and conservation.
Please contact Todd Gartner, Senior Associate and Manager, with any project inquiries.
Building on over a decade of engagements in dozens of watersheds around the world, we develop and disseminate guidance and provide advisory services and technical assistance to national and local governments, businesses, utilities and landowners to advance investment in natural infrastructure for the provision of essential water services. We specialize in helping watershed stakeholders identify and pursue the evidence base, partnerships, program design and finance needed for successful investments in healthy forests, grasslands, farmlands, watersheds and wetlands.
Roadmap for Watershed Investment in the United States: In collaboration with the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities and Colorado State University, WRI developed a roadmap for utilities and communities to aid in the establishment and growth of watershed investment programs in the United States.
Guidance for Investing in Forested Landscapes for Source Water Protection in the United States: In collaboration with Earth Economics and Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, WRI developed comprehensive guidance on the economics, science, partnerships, and finance mechanisms underlying successful natural infrastructure investments.
Green Utility Network: WRI partners with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Vitens Evides International (VEI) to chair the Green Utility Network. The Network facilitates partnerships between governments, the private sector, and civil society to catalyze investments in water infrastructure that contains both green and gray systems.