BUILDING CLIMATE RESILIENCE AND WATER SECURITY IN CITIES: LESSONS FROM THE SPONGE CITY OF WUHAN, CHINA

Cities are increasingly adopting nature-based solutions – that is,
interventions that rely on providing, restoring, protecting and/or
sustainably managing natural or modified spaces and ecosystems –
as alternatives to conventional urban development. In 2013,
China’s national government launched the “Sponge City
Programme” in response to its urban water management challenges
The programme encouraged cities to adopt green and blue
infrastructure (based on natural areas and water elements) rather
than grey infrastructure (based on concrete and steel). Wuhan – a
pilot “sponge city” – has shown that green and blue infrastructure
can be employed both quickly and cost-effectively to increase the
resilience of urban areas to a changing climate.
Wuhan’s sponge city programme is more than CNY 4 billion (almost
US$ 600 million) cheaper than an alternative (i.e. grey infrastructurebased) approach to increasing the city’s resilience to flooding. The
case study also shows that the Sponge City Programme generates
wider social and environmental benefits, such as reduced carbon
emissions, improved public health, enhanced natural cooling and
improved biodiversity conservation. The city’s successes were made
possible by an implementation framework, put in place by the
national government, which incentivised and enabled lower levels of
government to adopt sponge city measures. This involved establishing
basic laws and regulations relating to sponge infrastructure; outlining
compulsory standards and targets that had to be met; providing support
in the form of technical guidelines, direct funding and favourable
financing instruments; and peer-to-peer learning across cities.