This article was originally published on Silicon Valley Business Journal.
“As the rain starts to fall this winter, we are reminded that the California climate cycles between long periods of drought and short bursts of intense rainfall. The record-setting fires that preceded this rain were a warning that climate change is making this cycle more extreme. Some scientists forecast that we are facing a 25 percent to 100 percent increase in extreme dry-to-wet precipitation events in the future.
We need innovative solutions to protect our communities from natural disasters, such as the urban flooding we saw in San Jose in 2017. Thinking innovatively means, in part, understanding and protecting the natural infrastructure we already benefit from — assets we too often take for granted.
Natural infrastructure is complementary to our traditional man-made infrastructure, with nature providing important “services” like flood protection, groundwater recharge, wildlife habitat, greenhouse gas reduction, and healthy soils for farmers to grow our food, all while promoting the overall health and safety of both human and natural communities.
Preservation of natural infrastructure, or natural capital as it’s sometimes called, is everyone’s business and it makes good business sense. By investing in the protection of our many and diverse environmental assets now, we avoid paying many times more to clean up otherwise avoidable problems later…”
Read on at: Silicon Valley Business Journal.
