Blue-Green Systems Special Issue on
Societal Challenges and Opportunities for Design of Blue-Green Transitions
CALL FOR PAPERS
Three decades of research into Nature-based solutions (NBS) and specifically Blue-Green Systems (BGS) have advanced our technological understanding of how water and green spaces are best built and managed in urban (and rural) areas. While we constantly upgrade our technical understandings, often we forget that people are the main user and beneficiary of such technologies and that we must tailor our solutions to bettering human lives. However, societal challenges are numerous (climate change, poverty, inequality, lack of access to blue-green resources, loss of biodiversity, etc.) and we are still trying to map and implement all opportunities in using NBS/BGS for sustainable transitions for improving societies and human life in and around cities.
This Special Issue focuses on cutting-edge work in examining challenges and opportunities of using BGS approaches in urban planning, landscape design and management, and their effects on society, from local groups to broader city or country-wide communities. We strongly incentivize submissions from multidisciplinary humanities research, focusing on original ideas, reviews, case-studies (local and global) or perspective pieces (by invitation only). We welcome contributions from engineers, sociologists, urban planners, ecologists, architects, landscape designers, economists and policymakers and stakeholders engaged in solving water and greening challenges of rapidly urbanizing planet.
We are pleased to invite you to submit a manuscript to Blue-Green Systems for peer review and possible publication in a Special Issue entitled Societal challenges and opportunities for design of blue-green transitions.
Relevant topics include (but not limited to):
- Effects of climate change on urban society and blue-green urban infrastructure and green spaces
- Humans and biodiversity in urban and rural settings. Research and practical applications
- Human activities in and around blue-green spaces. Challenges and opportunities for improvements
- Blue-green transitions in developing countries
- Relevance of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) on human-focused urbanization and blue-green transition
- Innovation in urban blue-green applications for dealing with societal challenges (e.g., urban farming, urban cooling, green roofs and green walls, shared-economy, etc.)
- Learning from history: impacts of place-based history on modern blue-green transitions
- Education and capacity building on BGS
- Economy, policy, governance and management around blue-green transitions
- Humanitarian relief for vulnerable settlements (through BGS lens)
- Ancestral, indigenous and non-traditional knowledge around BGS
Key dates:
Deadline for manuscript submission: 1st March 2025
Expected publication: Articles will be published online as soon as possible after acceptance.
Managing Editor:
Veljko Prodanovic, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Guest Editors:
Maria Ignatieva, University of Western Australia, Australia
Diana Dushkova, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Germany
Fengping Yang, Southwest University, China
Eduardo Mario Mendiondo, University of São Paulo, Brazil
How to submit:
Please make sure that your paper follows the Instructions to Authors of the journal, before submitting your paper directly to Blue-Green System’s peer review system. Then choose the article type – ‘Special Issue Article OA’ and the submission category – Special Issue: Challenges and Opportunities of BGS. This will send your paper to one of the Guest Editors.
Information about Publication Fees, discounts and waivers can be found here: https://iwaponline.com/open_access/pages/publication_fees