Making the most of communities' natural assets: green infrastructure

Making better land use choices

There is growing Scottish experience of innovative ways to apply these principles to make better use of land to sustain nature's benefits. They can be reflected in land-use decisions from development plans to design plans and delivery of services from drainage to health to park management. Local authorities and developers play a critical role in this process, but improving green infrastructure requires a collaborative approach involving other organisations in the public and private sector and communities. The Scottish Government's National Performance Framework and Single Outcome Agreements provide the framework to work together in this way. Community Planning Partnerships are important in setting an overall vision for an integrated and holistic approach that recognises the value of green infrastructure. They can also work to ensure synergy with neighbouring partnerships.

The following steps apply to any decisions which make use of or affect the natural environment and the benefits from it. Examples for particular types of decision-making are given in the next section.

• Identify your natural assets or green infrastructure. Natural assets cannot be considered separately as they are often linked through natural processes such as water or wildlife movements, or through the way people use them such as path networks, so they are best considered as part of a network. Integrated Habitats Networks are one way of identifying natural assets and opportunities to enhance them.
• Be aware of the effects of different choices for planning and land use on nature and the benefits it provides, such as using Strategic Environmental Assessment ( SEA). For example, built development that limits soil sealing reduces run-off rates and flood risk. SEA can also help to identify opportunities to enhance green infrastructure.
• Where appropriate, support transfer of responsibilities for management and decision-making to communities through community ownership, co-operatives or partnerships, for example community development trusts, community land buy-outs or community woodland.
• Use indicators of the health of the environment against which to measure whether the benefits from nature are being sustained into the future, and to help decide where action is needed to restore a healthy environment. The Environmental Indicators Framework, published to support measures in the Menu of Local Outcome Indicators, shows how indicators can be used to describe the state of the environment, and to describe progress towards outcomes and the activities required to support that progress. Indicators can improve understanding of environmental limits. Where possible indicators should be meaningful for the public who can get involved in improving local environmental knowledge through citizen science and nature recording networks, such as Local Record Centres or internet-based recording like i-Spot.