NUGIRT is a collaboration of peak bodies and professional institutions across the green infrastructure sector, convened and coordinated by the Australasian Green Infrastructure Network (AGIN), connecting expertise spanning landscape architecture, horticulture, arboriculture, planning, engineering, parks and leisure, the built environment and related fields. Together, participating organisations represent more than 24,000 professional members and industries supporting more than 500,000 Australian jobs, with Australia's UGI sector generating more than $3.4 billion a year and growing.
We exist because the challenges facing our cities - natural hazards, housing growth, biodiversity loss, public health, infrastructure resilience and liveability, are interconnected and don't sit within one profession or portfolio. Green infrastructure can help address this, but fragmented approaches cannot deliver change at the scale required.
History
NUGIRT grew out of a 2024 episode of podcast The Plant Pod, after which Belinda Bean, David Martin and Michael Casey kept talking about a gap they'd all noticed: plenty of organisations were already working towards greener, healthier, more resilient cities, but no single forum brought the different disciplines together.
With the Australian Government consulting on its National Urban Policy around the same time, David pulled together stakeholders from across the sector, and Gail Hall (AGIN co-founder and then president) coordinated a joint submission from five organisations. That submission became the first National Urban Green Infrastructure Roundtable, which grew over the next 18 months into a meeting point for peak bodies and industry leaders to compare priorities and speak with a more coordinated voice on urban green infrastructure.
In 2026, NUGIRT entered its next phase, with AGIN taking on coordination of the Roundtable. AGIN President, Dr Sebastian Pfautsch is the current chair.
Purpose
We bring industries together to:
- give urban green infrastructure a strong, unified national voice
- build the evidence base and influence policy, planning and investment
- strengthen standards and technical guidance
- connect research with practice and build workforce capability
- accelerate the delivery and long-term management of high-quality green infrastructure
Our Call to Action
It's time to treat green infrastructure as critical infrastructure - equal to roads, electricity, water and communications.
Housing growth, extreme heat, climate risk, biodiversity loss and health pressures are converging on our cities at once. Green infrastructure is one of the few tools that can address them all together.
NUGIRT is calling for a national approach that moves urban greening beyond isolated projects and into mainstream infrastructure, planning and investment. That means:
- recognising its value
- planning, funding, delivering and maintaining it with the same seriousness as other infrastructure
- setting clear expectations
- embedding green infrastructure into current builds.
