CityAdapt’s various implementation activities are carried out with demonstration sites to showcase benefits to surrounding populations and inspire replication. This includes demonstration sites for edible mushroom cultivation, urban gardens, roof rainwater harvesting systems, beekeeping, water infiltration systems, agroforestry, and other activities.
CityAdapt also emphasizes learning from project activities, especially for planning officials and communities to take ownership and help them continue after project end. It has therefore produced or is producing an array of knowledge products, including manuals, policy briefs, case studies, technical guidelines, and education material for children. A key aspect of this work has been highlighting NbS’ cost-effectiveness in comparison to conventional solutions (see story maps).
One key is a virtual class with 45 students that work on adaptation-related issues in their respective 17 countries. All the students reported an across-the-board improvement in their knowledge of NbS for urban adaptation. This class model will now be expanded to other regions. These learning components help to build the case for further NbS integration in urban planning and policy while spreading CityAdapt’s lessons to other actors interested in using NbS for their respective cities.
Key factors for this building block’s success are the baseline established by the vulnerability assessment, and the ongoing participation in activities by local communities.
Academic institutions with a local presence must be involved in the project, for example via master’s students’ thesis research. The academic institutions and their students need real-world projects for applied learning, and the adaptation activities need someone to carry on with monitoring and evaluation. This helps to ensure project sustainability and the continuity of project implementation and essential M&E tools. At the same time, local participation in monitoring (also referred to as citizen science in many contexts) is key for buy-in and ownership of activities, in addition to collecting useful data. School activities have been highly advantageous for generating local interest in project activities, as children take lessons learned home to share with their families. The pandemic has represented a major challenge to this effort, but the project has adapted, and created virtual educational games for children to play at home with their parents and teachers.
Building block 2: Nature-based Solutions for Adaptation via Sustainable Livelihoods and Green Infrastructure
Edible flat mushrooms produced in the peri-urban area of Xalapa
CityAdapt
Coffee plantations in peri-urban area of San Salvador restored with oak trees
CityAdapt
The Nature-based Solutions themselves are a core building block of the project. These solutions include reforestation, riparian restoration and infiltration trenches, the establishment of lineal, permeable trails for improved watershed functioning to reduce the risk of flooding and landslides during heavy rains, and water scarcity during dry periods. The tangible co-benefit of these measures is the reduction of disaster risk and easier access to water supplies, to name just two.
An integral part of these Nature-based Solutions is the creation of sustainable livelihoods that take pressure off ecosystems, including edible mushroom cultivation, beekeeping, urban agroforestry and gardening. The presence of these activities not only helps with decreasing pressure on ecosystems but also creating buy-in on the part of communities; they see a tangible economic benefit from the project and thus have a vested interest in its success. For example, mushroom cultivation has led to an additional source of income of $152 USD per month per plot for Xalapa households.
The inclusion of key community and government stakeholders is crucial for this building block’s success, in addition to the physical space and coordination among differing agency mandates needed to implement NbS on a scale that will lead to tangible benefits.
Identifying “hotspots,” or the most vulnerable areas of the community to implement NbS has been crucial to make the largest, and most visible, impact possible to prove the effectiveness of such solutions to the community. The project’s watershed perspective has also been critical for success, as it captures the ecosystem services (water infiltration) even when they extend beyond municipal limits to other jurisdictions. Community involvement is key to help avoid “maladaptation” or livelihood activities that will not be useful to communities or even add to existing problems (for example, crops that are not suited to a region’s soils), especially if there is a lack of interest or buy-in to continue them after the project has ended. Fruit trees and community gardens, for example, have proved to be successful sources of alternative livelihoods for different members of the community while helping to stabilize soils and regulate water flows. Co-benefits from livelihood creation and reduced damages from disasters are crucial for community and government buy-in and integration of NbS in future planning processes.
Building block 1: Gender-differentiated vulnerability assessment
Participatory process for vulnerability assessment
CityAdapt
This vulnerability assessment methodology allows for the accurate targeting of nature-based solutions to critical areas of need in cities and sectors of the population. It specifically includes a gender focus to ensure that adaptation efforts take into account how climate change affects women differently than men, given their varying roles in society. The vulnerability studies allow identifying the areas of greatest danger from weather-related events (such as landslides, floods, etc.) based on the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of the analyzed territory. They are carried out through participatory processes with communities and key stakeholders and climatic scenarios that integrate climatic, environmental and socioeconomic variables at the same time. The analysis also allows estimating the risk of loss of ecosystem services and therefore the potential needs for adaptation to climate change. This exercise is the basis for designing and implementing nature-based solutions to strengthen the resilience of communities in urban and peri-urban systems. Finally, this process builds a sense of co-ownership and relationships for partnerships to carry out the project.
One of the main conditions needed for this building block’s success is the inclusion and approval of local communities and key stakeholders within those communities and their respective governments. Additionally, strong sources of climate and hydrological data facilitate this analysis process greatly.
A key aspect of this block is access to data. For example, Mexico has abundant meteorological and hydrological data while El Salvador does not. This allowed for a much more thorough climate change scenario in the former case. In terms of the consultation process, capturing perceived risk, in addition to modeled risks, is key for developing targeted activities where they are most needed. In that process, including women through the gender-differentiated approach also contributes to better targeted adaptation efforts by successfully identifying socially vulnerable populations. During this vulnerability assessment, capacity building is essential to ensure that communities and policy makers can interpret and use the assessments subsequently.
Building block 1: Gender-differentiated vulnerability assessment
Building block 2: Nature-based Solutions for Adaptation via Sustainable Livelihoods and Green Infrastructure
Building block 3: Project Learning Activities
Strengthening the science-policy interface for socially inclusive governance
Workshop with decision-makers to analyze the applicability and usability of research tools and other outcomes within the protected area
UOC team
The elaboration of a plan for creating understanding and collaboration between researchers and decision-makers was a necessary tool to promote that scientific knowledge can have impacts on the policy domain. This plan entailed the following actions:
Face-to-face or online meetings to formally introduce the research project to the protected area decision-makers and managers while using media (e.g., radio and press), and developing seminars to inform local residents and other stakeholders about the project;
Invitation to decision-makers and managers to be involved in the project activities (e.g. local knowledge alliance, film and meetings);
Tailoring the research activities to the decision-makers agenda to facilitate their participation;
Organization of regular meetings, webinars and newsletters in local languages to inform about the project advances and findings;
Development of workshops with decision-makers to analyze the applicability and usability of resulting tools and other research outcomes within the protected area;
Dissemination of research reports in local language before academic article publications to validate the results;
Writing posts in the national park’s blog and other related websites to disseminate research findings within the protected area channels.
Conducted key-informant interviews with staff from the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park to identify the interests and needs of decision-makers and align our research activities;
Involved key staff from the National Park with the capacity to promote institutional changes and decisions to facilitate that our scientific insights might reach impacts on the management setting;
Organized a workshop with decision-makers to evaluate research tools in terms of applicability in the management cycle in order to facilitate their use by them.
An early exploration of the management and decision-making setting is relevant to plan for and develop solution-oriented research that can be implemented within the management cycle;
Periodical meetings between researchers and decision-makers help scientists gain awareness of the variety of directions in which their research can impact the policy domain, and decision-makers gain access to the best available evidence to make decisions. This is crucial to align research to the decision-makers' needs and facilitate the use of science in the management setting;
Producing scientific outcomes that are translatable into real outcomes in the management can motivate decision-makers to participate in the research;
Writing policy reports to introduce scientific insights into the native language facilitates the use of scientific information by decision-makers;
Planning the research activities so that overwhelming decision-makers with multiple requests is avoided.
Addressing power dynamics and promoting engagement in collective action
The analytical tool to guide participation assessment of governance arrangements in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park (adapted from López-Rodríguez et al. 2020)
María D. López Rodríguez
The “barometer of power”, one of the theatre-based facilitation techniques to address power dynamics between stakeholders used in a virtual workshop in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park
Maria Heras
Screenshot of the context-specific boundary object to call for collective action used in an online workshop in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park
María D. López Rodríguez
These three decision-making tools were crucial to address power dynamics and promote stakeholders' participation and engagement in collective action in the National Park:
An analytical tool to characterize types of governance arrangements in the protected area. Formal and informal governance arrangements were classified in terms of stakeholders’ responsibility (shared vs. concentrated) and influence (equal vs. unequal) into four types: prescriptive, informative, consultative, and cooperative. By applying this tool in the National Park we identified challenges for more socially inclusive conservation while enhancing existing participatory mechanisms and delineating new ones;
Theatre-based facilitation techniques to address power dynamics between stakeholders. By using them in a virtual workshop, participants deliberated on their roles and power relations around conservation governance and how these may be reconciled to improve collaboration;
A context-specific boundary object to facilitate collective action for conservation governance. Using this graphical tool in a workshop, participants assessed their level of willingness to put several strategies into practice. The tool visualized the results graphically as a proxy of the potential willingness to move from theory to practice.
The analytical tool to characterize governance arrangements requires data collection about the existing decision-making mechanisms behind each arrangement identified, the stakeholders engaged and how they are engaged;
The art-based approaches and context-specific boundary object require a process based on co-learning and knowledge co-production approaches through which stakeholders deliberate on power dynamics, conservation challenges and define collaborative strategies to address them.
Analyzing both formal and informal-based governance arrangements serves as a means to understand how participation in conservation decision-making is actually shaped within protected areas governance and how to improve stakeholder engagement given the context;
It is important to consider informal governance mechanisms to understand potential trade-offs because they can lead to both positive and negative outcomes for conservation;
Stakeholders’ responsibility and influence are key analytical axes to delineate participatory mechanisms in order to identify opportunities for more socially inclusive conservation;
Art-based methods are useful to incorporate power relations aspects into conservation debates;
Elucidating unequal relations for conservation governance offers opportunities to clarify stakeholders’ roles and their responsibilities and facilitate a better understanding of how these may be reconciled to improve collaboration;
The assessment of stakeholders’ willingness to be involved in putting the strategies into practice is a crucial factor to guide collective action.
Elucidating visions and future scenarios for park management
Screenshot of the preliminary results from PGIS analysis conducted in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park (Spatial data obtained with Mapptionaire)
Miguel Ángel Cebrián Piqueras
Streamline illustrations used to facilitate interviews and discussions groups in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park
Veronica Lo
Online workshop for participatory scenario planning in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park
UOC team
These three tools help to identify visions and elaborate future scenarios, in a participatory way, for protected areas management:
Participatory mapping (PGIS), a tool to visualize information in a particular geographical context focusing on a certain issue of interest. This tool was used in surveys to elicit the residents’ visions based on perceptions of landscape values and local knowledge;
Streamline, an open-source narrative synthesis tool that integrates graphics in the form of canvases and tiles, facilitating interviews and discussion groups in a creative and stimulating way. Streamline was used with stakeholders’ expressing their values and preferences for management actions, and sharing their knowledge of changes in the landscape;
Participatory scenario planning exercise, a deliberative process that was facilitated about plausible and desired futures through a two-day online workshop (due to the Covid-19 pandemic) with stakeholders. Based on the current socio-ecological conditions and the factors driving change, participants weighed up what could happen in the coming 20 years, discussed implications for biodiversity conservation and the quality of life of those who currently enjoy the ecosystem services it provides, whilst identifying the strategies to address them.
Inviting and giving voice to stakeholder groups that are often poorly included in social spaces to publicly debate about conservation;
Creating a collaborative process built upon dissent-based approaches to promote a transparent and horizontal work-space;
Building workgroups with a balanced representation between stakeholder groups, regions of the residence and gender, helps so that not only majoritarian voices are heard.
Local facilitators and collaborators were essential to approach a big sample of local residents in the surveys and the workshop;
Online processes require significant efforts and human resources to handle multiple platforms and technical issues simultaneously. Specific expert facilitation skills are required;
Scenario planning methodologies should more strongly consider different potential disturbances and how drivers of change in the near and far future can be affected by wildcard events such as a pandemic.
Interview with the co-director of the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park.
Veronica Lo
To facilitate place-based processes that foster inclusive conservation it is necessary to collect local/traditional knowledge, views, and values from multiple stakeholders. Some methods to gather such information were used in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park:
Oral histories and historical datasets review to reconstruct how past visions and drivers of environmental impact have changed over the last 50 years and inform current and future conservation goals;
Interviews with local stakeholders on 1) how participation works in the protected area and potential barriers/opportunities for more social engagement, and 2) their visions for park management, the values and knowledge that underpin the visions, and their perceptions of landscape changes and the underlying drivers;
Face-to-face surveys with residents, including participatory mapping tools (i.e. Maptionnaire) about landscape values and ecological knowledge. Online surveys with local stakeholders to identify changes in their visions, values and perceptions of the landscape after the COVID-19 pandemic; and
Deliberative processes embedded in a participatory scenario planning exercise that used cognitive and emotional maps to collect collective knowledge of the protected area while capturing intertwined affective relationships.
Created an atmosphere of shared understanding, respect and trust with participants to facilitate collaboration along the process;
Clarified the project's goals and practical outcomes to manage expectations and stimulate participation; and
Co-designed with participants an outreach plan to better disseminate the generated outcomes while making participants realise about the impact of their engagement and fostering learning from others' experience.
Planning activities with stakeholders carefully to avoid overwhelming them with requests;
Developing activities according to the timetable, schedule and disruptive events situations (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) that work better for most participants;
Using quantitative research approaches to gather context-based knowledge may result in biased information. A mixed-method approach based on quantitative and qualitative data can help avoid bias and get a more in-depth knowledge of the context;
Online methods work well and their implementation saves time and money when compared with face-to-face events, but are less effective in achieving good personal interactions;
Synthesizing and sharing the knowledge is appreciated by the stakeholders. For example, the knowledge gathered from individual stakeholders about landscape changes in the National Park was shared with the stakeholder group at a workshop with the opportunity for short discussions. Stakeholders indicated that they had learned and understood other peoples’ points of views on landscape changes and drivers of change.
