Why Green Beats Grey: Rethinking Climate Resilience from the Roots

Sanghamitra Mishra

Each year, as July 26 approaches, coastal communities across the world pause to mark World Mangrove Day, a quiet yet powerful reminder that some of our strongest allies in the face of climate change are rooted in mud, not metal.

Mangroves, salt-tolerant trees that thrive where land meets sea – have long defended fragile coasts against rising tides and battering storms. But today, they stand for more. They represent a shift in how we think about resilience – not as something we build over nature, but something we grow with it.

In a world increasingly reliant on concrete embankments and steel reinforcements to hold back climate extremes, perhaps it’s time we ask: What if green is smarter than grey? 

When Grey Falls Short 

Across India’s disaster-prone regions – from the deltas of West Bengal to the floodplains of Tamil Nadu – the dominant approach to disaster risk reduction has long been engineering-centric. Grey infrastructure such as levees, embankments, and floodwalls has offered protection. But the costs are high, the maintenance unrelenting, and the benefits often short-lived. Worse still, these structures are frequently designed with minimal community involvement, reducing local ownership and ultimately limiting impact. Concrete cracks. Steel rusts. And in the face of intensifying climate shocks, these grey solutions are increasingly revealing their limitations – financially, ecologically, and socially. 

Why Green Works Better 

Nature-Based Solutions offer a compelling alternative. Instead of resisting ecological processes, they work with them. In practice, this means restoring mangroves to buffer coasts, planting vetiver grass to stabilise embankments, reviving traditional ponds to support water security, and using native vegetation to prevent erosion. These interventions don’t just defend – they also heal. They restore ecosystems, provide income, improve biodiversity, and absorb carbon. Most critically, they place communities – not contractors – at the centre of resilience-building.

These solutions align closely with SEEDS’ five-pillar framework of climate resilience: they anticipate risks through ecosystem buffers, survive shocks through protective green infrastructure, recover livelihoods with ecosystem services, adapt through nature-integrated planning, and aspire toward regenerative futures led by communities.

In the Muddy Fields of the Sundarbans 

Nowhere is this more evident than in the muddy fields of the Sundarbans, one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable ecosystems. Here, repeated cyclones and tidal surges have battered lives and livelihoods. Concrete embankments, though widely used, have failed time and again. In their place, communities have begun planting hope – quite literally.

Through SEEDS’ efforts,  nearly half a million mangrove saplings have been planted across 42+ hectares in the Sundarbans. These trees now fringe the coastline, shielding it not just from erosion but from despair. Alongside the mangroves, vetiver grass – with its deep, fibrous roots – has been planted along streambanks and embankments. Supported by bamboo fencing and coir rolls, these natural reinforcements are holding the land together where machines once failed. Across 85 vulnerable sites, 1.6+ hectares have been stabilised through eco-engineering-based streambank protection across three blocks.

The results are tangible. In Heramba Gopalpur, a farmer shared that floods once claimed his land every year, but now, “We’re getting it back.” Beyond the coastlines, over 60 traditional ponds have been revived. Once choked with silt and saline intrusion, these ponds now support freshwater fisheries, irrigate fields, and help moderate local temperatures. In a region grappling with both rising salinity and water scarcity, these ponds are not just infrastructure – they are lifelines.

What ties all these efforts together is the leadership of local women. More than 180+ women from 17+ Self-Help Groups are managing nurseries, kitchen gardens, pisciculture, leading planting drives, and putting their labour in bund reinforcement. These are not symbolic roles or supplementary efforts. Women are leading end-to-end processes – making decisions, managing teams, and guiding field action. Their work demonstrates that climate resilience is not only about ecosystems – it is about equity, empowerment, and agency.

Together, these community-led, nature-based interventions form a deeply interconnected web of protection. They protect land, secure livelihoods, restore dignity, and build hope. They are not just environmental fixes – they are social contracts, rooted in trust, care, and cooperation. 

Why Green Beats Grey 

Unlike concrete embankments that weaken over time, nature-based solutions grow stronger with each passing year. Mangroves and vetiver don’t just hold the line – they deepen their roots, expand their canopies, and multiply their impact season after season. Their strength compounds over time rather than collapsing under pressure.

While grey infrastructure typically serves a single purpose – such as flood control – green infrastructure offers a suite of co-benefits. It protects shorelines, filters water, conserves biodiversity, sequesters carbon, and generates livelihoods. These nature-based interventions are often far more cost-effective, relying on local materials and labour, and reducing the need for heavy machinery or outside contractors.

What sets green solutions apart is not just their ecological performance but their social embeddedness. Women lead nurseries, farmers direct planting, and youth monitor outcomes. This community-first approach embeds care, accountability, and sustainability – qualities often missing from top-down engineering interventions.

Environmentally, nature heals what concrete often harms. While grey infrastructure fragments ecosystems and raises surface temperatures, green buffers stitch landscapes back together, cool microclimates, and restore ecological balance. Green doesn’t just protect – it regenerates. 

A Call for Hybrid Approaches 

None of this is to say grey infrastructure is obsolete. In dense cities or emergency contexts, engineered defences remain essential. But the future lies in hybrid models – where the precision of engineering meets the adaptability of nature. At SEEDS, we are piloting such models: vetiver-reinforced embankments with community-led early warning systems, mangrove buffers surrounding disaster-resilient shelters, and green-roofed community hubs that capture rainwater and cool interiors. These aren’t pilot projects; they are blueprints for a new kind of resilience – smart, inclusive, and scalable.

Shifting the Narrative 

For too long, resilience has been something governments commission and engineers build. But true resilience is grown – by people, in place, over time. Nature-Based Solutions flip the script. They turn dependence into dignity, risk into regeneration, and passive recipients into active protectors.

On this World Mangrove Day, we urge planners, funders, and governments to move from building barriers to growing buffers, from top-down interventions to community-first innovation, from short-term protection to long-term thriving. Because green isn’t just a colour. It’s a commitment – to work with nature, to trust local wisdom, and to build resilience that lasts.

Green Isn’t Just a Colour – It’s a Commitment

When nature leads, communities rise stronger. Whether it’s a woman tending a mangrove nursery or a youth group reinforcing a bond with vetiver, they are showing us a better way forward. One where the strongest walls may not be made of concrete, but of roots, resolve, and community.

In this decisive decade for climate action, green doesn’t just beat grey – it outlasts it.

Head – Centre of Excellence, Nature Based Solution at the Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS)