Urban Klima 2050 elaborates on climate change adaptation actions at local level in the Basque Country during the UNED climate emergency course
09/11/2022
On 8 November, the LIFE IP Urban Klima 2050 project took part in the third day of the 'Climate Emergency: Adaptation as an Effective Tool against Climate Change' course, organised by UNED [Spanish Open University] and which will be run from 21 September to 18 April. The series of sessions – with a total of 22 contact hours and online format – use real adaptation cases to set out general climate change concepts and work methods.
During the third session of the course, entitled 'The Local Setting and its Adaptation', technicians from different LIFE projects introduced the students to four projects: LIFE-IP NAdapta-CC, LIFE Good Local Adapt, LIFE Adaptate and LIFE IP Urban Klima 2050.
Malake Muñoz Cachón, a member of the Urban Klima 2050 coordination team and Ihobe Climate Action Projects manager, focused her talk on climate change adaptation at local level in the Basque Country. Muñoz spoke about innovation and demonstration projects related to climate change adaptation – Klimatek that use the developed knowledge to generate the necessary instruments for the decision-makers to have a sound base to underpin their decisions. She also discussed the importance of local climate innovation, which is mainly driven in the form of funding for the municipalities to encourage the running of pilot schemes that, once tried and tested, are then passed on other municipalities.
In the same vein, Muñoz went over some of the instruments that have been developed in the Basque Country. She stressed the specific municipal risk and vulnerability data sheets for the 251 Basque municipalities and the associated viewer to consult data on four impact chains: drought, floods, rising sea level and heat waves. She likewise pointed out that a viewer had been developed as part of the Kostaegoki project, to provide data on the sea level in the Basque Country, where a high percentage of citizens live near to the coast. She mentioned the availability of a tool on Basque climate scenario which allows used to download precipitation and temperature figures. She also pointed out that work is underway as part of Urban Klima 2050 on additional climate variables including humidity, wind, radiation and landslides.
She then looked at other work being carried out in Urban Klima 2050, and ended with several examples of adaptation measures implemented in municipalities including Legazpi, Oñati, Errigoiti, Errentería, Gorliz, Bermeo and Bakio.
Over 1,100 people have already signed up to this free training, which is the result of the partnership agreement between the Environment General Directorate, through LIFE-IP NAdapta-CC, the Delegation of the State Meteorology Agency (AEMET) in Navarra and the associated centre of the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED - Spanish Open University) in Tudela.
