Nature as Infrastructure: Restoration with Returns

Some of the most effective infrastructure solutions are not built—they are grown. Nature as Infrastructure: Restoration with Returns explores how ecosystems function as assets that protect communities, support economies, and strengthen climate resilience.
This book takes a nature-first investment lens. It examines wetlands that reduce flood damage, mangroves that protect coastlines, forests that regulate water and carbon, and soils that stabilize agriculture. Rather than treating restoration as charity, the book frames it as infrastructure with measurable returns.
Readers learn how natural systems deliver services that engineered solutions struggle to match—and often at lower cost. The book also confronts tradeoffs: land use, time horizons, maintenance, and governance. Restoration succeeds only when ecological function and economic incentives align.
This book explores:
• How ecosystems reduce risk and repair damage
• Why nature-based solutions outperform gray infrastructure
• How restoration delivers long-term economic value
• Where measurement makes nature investable
• Why resilience can be regenerative, not extractive
This book is for investors, policymakers, planners, and climate leaders looking beyond concrete and steel. If resilience can be restored rather than constructed, this book shows how nature becomes infrastructure—with returns that last.