Natural Infrastructure Solutions
Natural infrastructure solutions—such as wetlands, green roofs, and rain gardens—can help meet water infrastructure needs in a cost-effective and resilient way.
2026 Survey: Scaling Up Natural Infrastructure on the Prairies
IISD, Associated Engineering, Green Analytics, and HTFC Planning & Design are developing three implementation guides to support natural infrastructure for flood mitigation, drought mitigation and water supply, and water quality. Although strong evidence demonstrates that natural infrastructure is effective across multiple scales—including communities, agricultural landscapes, and watersheds—its adoption is underused.
This survey seeks input on a proposed road map built around six key pillars designed to accelerate and scale up the use of natural infrastructure across the Canadian Prairies.
Natural infrastructure can support four functions that help provide water services, often complementing or replacing expensive grey infrastructure:
- Deliver the service directly, with the ability to entirely or partially substitute for the grey infrastructure asset.
- Enhance the service delivered by a grey infrastructure asset to support the functioning, quality, and efficiency of service provision. This function can reduce the need for maintenance and inputs.
- Protect the service delivered by a grey infrastructure asset, for example, from extreme climate events.
- Render multiple benefits or co-benefits, in addition to the primary infrastructure service. Co-benefits may be social, economic, or environmental such as boosting jobs, improving health, or supporting biodiversity.
Across the Canadian Prairies, natural infrastructure assets are helping to bridge the growing water-related infrastructure gap while delivering social, economic, and environmental co-benefits. Natural infrastructure, including natural or restored assets (e.g., wetland) and constructed assets (e.g., green roof), supports three critical water management areas:
- Natural Infrastructure for Flood Mitigation
- Natural Infrastructure for Water Supply and Drought Mitigation
- Natural Infrastructure for Water Quality
