It starts with a rain barrel, a shaded courtyard, a sidewalk sponge. Welcome to our Signals: short dispatches on everyday climate adaptation, from Dresden to Delhi to Denver.
This living collection highlights products, projects, and practices from around the world that reflect the next steps in climate adaptation, whether cutting edge, rediscovered, or simply well implemented.
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→ For years, urban planners have debated green versus grey. But the climate doesn’t care about that divide, and neither can cities.
Recent studies show why: during extreme rainfall, purely vegetated systems lose hydraulic performance as soils saturate and infiltration stops.
By contrast, hybrid drainage - vegetation paired with engineered subdrains or controlled outlets - retains up to 80% efficiency even under peak storm intensity (Water, 2024).
Across case studies, these systems cut runoff peaks by 60%, lower surface temperatures by 2–4°C, and reduce lifecycle costs by around 25% compared with conventional infrastructure (World Bank 2023; Zhu et al. 2025).
It is no longer a question of choosing sides.
The future is nature first, engineered where needed - a pragmatic evolution that makes resilience measurable, maintainable, and finally scalable.
🔗 MDPI Water Journal – Hybrid Drainage Systems Study (2024)
🔗 Seidu et al., 2025 – Integrating green and grey infrastructure systems in dense urban settings (Springer, Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy)
🔗 Zhu et al., 2025 – Integrating Blue–Green Infrastructure with Gray elements (MDPI Land 14(3):634)
🔗 World Bank – The Role of Green Infrastructure Solutions in Urban Flood Risk Management (2023)
In eastern Nepal, growing water scarcity had come to shape daily life - even driving some families to leave their villages. A UNDP-led watershed programme now shows how nature-based water management can reverse this trend.
Across Khotang and Okhaldhunga, 600 springs have been protected, 100 ponds and 40 trenches built, and rooftop rainwater harvesting introduced for irrigation. These measures revived 2,500 hectares of farmland and eased water stress for thousands of households. The Koshi Province government has since funded more recharge ponds, and nearby districts are now adopting similar nature-based methods to strengthen drought resilience.