Green infrastructure and climate change adaptation in university campuses: nature-based solutions for resilience

University campuses in climate-vulnerable regions face escalating heat, flooding, and water stress yet remain dependent on grey infrastructure with limited adaptive capacity. Despite growing support for green infrastructure (GI) and nature-based solutions (NbS), empirical evidence of their effectiveness in campus climate adaptation is scarce. This study examines the influence of green infrastructure on climate adaptation and smart sustainable campus integration in selected public universities in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. Grounded in Social–Ecological Systems (SES) resilience theory, the research adopts a quantitative cross-sectional survey design. Data were collected from 446 stakeholders across six (6) universities using structured Likert-scale questionnaires. Ordinal logistic regression analysis was employed to evaluate the relative effects of current green infrastructure provision, implementation challenges, and campus sustainability practices on adaptation outcomes. The findings reveal that existing green infrastructure on campus is the only statistically significant predictor of climate adaptation, increasing the likelihood of higher adaptation outcomes by more than threefold. In contrast, implementation challenges and isolated sustainability practices do not significantly influence adaptation when green infrastructure is accounted for. This indicates that visible, functional, and spatially integrated green infrastructure rather than policy intent or technological initiatives alone acts as the primary catalyst for climate resilience on university campuses. The originality of this study lies in its empirical isolation of green infrastructure as a keystone adaptation mechanism within university-based social–ecological systems in the Global South. However, the dominance of green infrastructure as a lone predictor underscores a broader institutional and governance failure across the sampled universities. The findings suggest that while spatial interventions provide immediate relief, the lack of coordinated policy and technological integration prevents the realization of holistic, long-term climate adaptation outcomes.</jats:p>