Sustainable urban development through a blue and green network approach focusing the protection of water resources: the case of the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Region, in Brazil

Abstract

This paper explores the potentialities offered by blue-green approaches to promote protection of water resources at the metropolitan scale and to contribute to structuring territorial development. An ongoing experience of regional planning and land use regulation in the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Region (BHMR), in Brazil, is here a reference. With a population of 5.8 million inhabitants and territory of 10,000 km2, the BHMR offers a rich example of land use diversity that highlights the complexity of metropolitan territorial planning and management. In the first part of the paper, blue-green concepts are developed emphasising their role for the protection of water resources. This is followed by the methods and results of applying these concepts to the BHMR. We then evaluate whether blue-green approaches are sufficient to protect water resources and discuss the potentialities of additional tools such as the payment for environmental services with the same objectives.