Urban Klima 2050 presents in Salamanca its climate action interventions for adapting the territory inside and outside the city
10/11/2023
Ihobe’s Director of Climate Action, Mari Mar Alonso Martín, took part in the LIFE Vía de la Plata’s “Climate Change Adaptation Strategies for Heritage Cities” Congress.
Last Friday 10 November, the LIFE IP Urban Klima 2050 project took part in the “Climate Change Adaptation Strategies for Heritage Cities” Congress organised by the LIFE Vía de la Plata project.
The meeting, which took place on 8-10 November at the International Spanish Centre of the University of Salamanca, brought together national and European experts from the environmental sector to discuss how cities, and in particular those listed as World Heritage Sites, can develop strategies to face the challenges of climate change.
Mari Mar Alonso Martín, Director of Climate Action at Ihobe, the Basque Government's Public Environmental Management Company, attended on behalf of Urban Klima 2050, and took part in the “Ecology and Development” session, where she gave a presentation called “Urban Klima 2050, adapting the territory inside and outside the city”.
Ihobe’s Director of Climate Action began her speech by explaining the risks facing the Basque Country in terms of climate change, such as the sea level rise, which affects ecosystems and towns on the coast; changing rainfall patterns; and the gradual increase in temperature and the increasing number of heat waves in the region.
In this context, Alonso talked about the tools that the Basque Country has developed to deploy climate action. In this respect, she highlighted the LIFE IP Urban Klima 2050 project as “a transformational project that is being implemented on a regional level for the deployment of climate and energy planning in the Basque Country”.
She focused on the pilot projects that Urban Klima 2050 has launched at three levels of intervention: urban and peri-urban areas, river basins and coastline, which have an impact on 43% of the population in the Basque Country.
As an example, she presented various actions that have been implemented in several Basque towns. These are some of the natured-based solutions and their benefits that she presented:
- The Catalogue of NbS implemented in and planned for Vitoria-Gasteiz
- The general methodology and potential NbS map of Donostia/San Sebastian
- The threat maps of the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz
- Integration of NbS into the future urban development of Bilbao
- The selection/prioritisation of new NbS interventions that improve the layout of the city of Donostia/San Sebastián
- Selection, design and implementation of new NbS in Vitoria-Gasteiz
After that, Ihobe’s Director of Climate Action focused on the actions aimed at key green infrastructure for improving urban-rural connection and the resilience of the territory:
- Recovery of the Tonpoi natural area (Bermeo) for public use with climate change adaptation criteria.
- Adaptation and ecological improvement of the Basaldea area as part of the Aramangelu Agro-ecological Park (Vitoria-Gasteiz)
- Restoration of degraded peri-urban areas of Vitoria-Gasteiz to promote ecosystem services
- Agronomic classification on a scale of 1:50000 of agro-ecological plots of agro-ecological plots on the outskirts of Vitoria-Gasteiz
In terms of actions aimed at nature-based solutions in river basins:
- Project to safeguard the River Estepona in Bakio
- Renaturing of the Errekatxulo regatta in Donostia/San Sebastian
Finally, she mentioned the actions for the adaptation of the urban coast:
- Pilot project in Zarautz to reduce the impacts of the combined effect of waves and tides
