Green infrastructure and climate change adaptation in university campuses: nature-based solutions for resilience

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides empirical evidence on GI as a key adaptation mechanism in university settings, useful for social-ecological systems research.

🏢実務担当者:Campus sustainability teams can use findings to prioritize visible, functional green infrastructure over isolated policy initiatives.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the need for coordinated policy and technological integration to complement green infrastructure for holistic adaptation.

University campuses in climate-vulnerable regions face escalating heat, flooding, and water stress yet remain dependent on grey infrastructure with limited adaptive capacity. Despite growing support for green infrastructure (GI) and nature-based solutions (NbS), empirical evidence of their effectiveness in campus climate adaptation is scarce. This study examines the influence of green infrastructure on climate adaptation and smart sustainable campus integration in selected public universities in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. Grounded in Social–Ecological Systems (SES) resilience theory, the research adopts a quantitative cross-sectional survey design. Data were collected from 446 stakeholders across six (6) universities using structured Likert-scale questionnaires. Ordinal logistic regression analysis was employed to evaluate the relative effects of current green infrastructure provision, implementation challenges, and campus sustainability practices on adaptation outcomes. The findings reveal that existing green infrastructure on campus is the only statistically significant predictor of climate adaptation, increasing the likelihood of higher adaptation outcomes by more than threefold. In contrast, implementation challenges and isolated sustainability practices do not significantly influence adaptation when green infrastructure is accounted for. This indicates that visible, functional, and spatially integrated green infrastructure rather than policy intent or technological initiatives alone acts as the primary catalyst for climate resilience on university campuses. The originality of this study lies in its empirical isolation of green infrastructure as a keystone adaptation mechanism within university-based social–ecological systems in the Global South. However, the dominance of green infrastructure as a lone predictor underscores a broader institutional and governance failure across the sampled universities. The findings suggest that while spatial interventions provide immediate relief, the lack of coordinated policy and technological integration prevents the realization of holistic, long-term climate adaptation outcomes.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.3389/frsus.2026.1777259first seen 2026-05-05 19:12:29