We are all familiar with grey infrastructure: the engineered “concrete” infrastructure of our cities, including roads, bridges, sewers, pipelines and rails. As designers, we might be familiar with green infrastructure, or landscape-based infrastructure such as green roofs, living walls, street trees, parks, wetlands and bioswales. Today, Canadians are becoming equally aware of the critical value of nature — and its building block, biodiversity. Without biodiversity, the basis of nature, there is no foundation for our economy — the “free” ecosystem services such as pollination, food, forests, soils, carbon and clean water on which we depend. These “services” are more appropriately called assets (or, from Indigenous, spiritual or relational worldviews, they are “gifts”). Whatever your view, they are essential functions without which human societies can’t survive, let alone thrive or flourish. It has also become clear that healthy, functioning nature or biodiversity is our best natural defence against climate change.
Recognizing and investing in nature as critical infrastructure is a growing movement focused around Nature-based Solutions (NbS). NbS include, for example, any actions — planning, design, engineering — that protect, conserve, restore, recover and/or sustainably manage nature (whether as natural or modified living ecosystems) to mitigate or resolve complex challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, human vulnerability and disaster risk. Importantly, growing research evidence shows that NbS also provide value-added co-benefits to human health and well-being.
On March 31 of this year, Prime Minister Carney announced the Force of Nature Strategy, followed on April 27 by the Canada Strong Fund. The former commits $3.8 billion to expanding national parks and protected areas, restoring ecosystems and using biodiversity data to reduce the environmental impacts of development, while the latter establishes a $25-billion investment fund to finance projects that strengthen Canada’s economy and infrastructure. These two policies might appear to be separate initiatives, but they should be read as closely integrated: Nature is vital infrastructure, and we need new tools to finance its permanence, and to enable and empower good design for climate resilience.
Consider Toronto’s 25-year waterfront transformation, which is one of the world’s most ambitious city-building projects at over $1.5 billion and 2,000 acres of reinvestment in grey and green infrastructure. This investment is grounded in a recognition of nature as infrastructure, a recurring theme at the recent Leading with Landscape conference (profiled in AZURE and held at the University of Toronto). These investments were made first in the landscape itself with an emphasis on ecologically performative, regenerative and culturally resonant places. Waterfront Toronto’s commitment to leading with landscape has resulted in city-building with landscape-based infrastructure as both catalyst and foundation: Investing in nature through NbS has enabled design for a more inclusive and climate-resilient city, generating co-beneficial forms of public and real economic value — from providing flood protection, restoring habitat and recovering biodiversity to supporting cultural vitality, improved urban development and expanding public access.
Toronto’s new Biidaasige Park, a centrepiece of the Toronto Portlands redevelopment, has been designed with NbS for biodiversity and climate resilience as key goals. The park’s sinuous new river channel, lush wetland coves and abundant green spaces (soft surfaces) slow and absorb stormwater, sequester carbon, provide rich habitat for pollinating insects, breeding and migratory birds, and mitigate urban heat. As demonstrated by the intense rain event in Toronto on September 2, 2026 (now identified as a 100-year storm), the park supplements the performance of grey infrastructure as storms become more severe without the need for additional investment. Notably, over time, the park will also generate a “nature premium”, adding value to every adjacent residential and commercial property.
In a recent report, the Montreal not-for-profit Ombrello Solutions has calculated that the $1.5 billion public investment in Toronto’s Port Lands has enabled a current development value of $3.4 billion. By 2036, the developed property value will be worth $24.8 billion. This increase is the nature premium generated by investments in Biidaasige Park and other NbS as “living landscapes.” Importantly, it is not a one-off prospect unique to Toronto’s waterfront. In New York City, for example, the High Line generated a premium on growth to the properties within 500 feet (or 150 metres) of 60 per cent — or US$3.4 billion — over an 11-year period, from its construction in 2007 to 2018.
Until now, funding NbS and investing in nature has been largely left to philanthropy and government. But if we consider nature as infrastructure, it could be financed in the same way as traditional grey infrastructure investments. While grey infrastructure and private assets depreciate over time, nature does the opposite, leading to returns (and benefits) that grow over the long term. This is the important connection between Canada’s $3.8-billion Force of Nature Strategy and the $25-billion Canada Strong sovereign wealth fund. Alone, each is insufficient to restore and protect Canada’s biodiversity, provide effective climate change adaptation and boost key grey infrastructure investments. But together, they amplify their reach well beyond their public funding by offering long-term investments in nature and empowering — indeed, requiring — good design for a resilient future.
By investing in nature as a critical asset, we can allocate this $3.8 billion in public funds to a portfolio of infrastructure interventions — with the design talent and expertise to realize them — catalyzed through the Canada Strong Fund. A relevant case study would be the soon-to-be opened Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Los Angeles, where landscape architects, engineers and ecologists, led by Robert Rock of RDA, designed the world largest habitat bridge, a living landscape that effectively reconnects the Santa Monica mountains to the Simi Hills and Santa Susana mountains over the 101 Ventura freeway. Investment in this infrastructure provides cost-efficient and safer transportation, as crossings reduce the incidence of wildlife vehicle collisions by 90 per cent, while enhancing biodiversity. The Canada-US partnership ARC Solutions and our Safe Passages project shows that this is also possible in Canada by connecting and protecting ecosystems with wildlife crossing systems across our transportation corridors.
In urban areas, it is now clear that real estate benefits from nature’s premium. Commercial and office properties, shopping malls and rental towers all become more attractive to tenants as adjacent natural parks mature and flourish. The nature premium also helps ensure these real estate assets don’t become stranded over time, but instead, retain and increase their value. Nature-based infrastructure also reduces liabilities, from insurance premiums to clean-up costs, for instance, those that drivers may face following a wildlife collision, or those which properties incur due to increased flooding, heat waves and ice storms.
Toronto’s waterfront, as speakers shared at the Leading with Landscape conference, is exemplary of the value of design excellence for climate resilience. It’s time we started recognizing nature as an essential infrastructure investment — one that enables development and empowers good design for climate resilience. The evidence shows that investing in nature as infrastructure generates private and public value along with co-benefits for climate, biodiversity and well-being. Pillar 3 of the Force of Nature strategy revisions how Canada values and invests in nature. With this approach, we will be far more likely to have a prosperous, healthy and resilient future. The global nature deficit (the cost to stop biodiversity loss) is already at US$600 billion annually and we cannot rely on public funding to close that gap. To leverage the extraordinary commitment of $3.8 billion, our governments need to invest in the innovation of new financial tools to fund nature’s permanence. This is the key to enable design excellence for NbS for long-term climate resilience. We need to invest in nature as infrastructure.
Nina-Marie Lister is Professor of Urban Planning and Director of the Ecological Design Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University. In 2021, she won the Margolese Prize.
Nature As Infrastructure: Investing in Nature Enables Design for a Resilient Future
Beyond their environmental benefits, resilient landscapes have the potential to enrich public health, well-being and cultural life — while generating lasting economic value.