Roadmaps for climate resilient futures

In the beginning of this year, five of the UNaLab follower cities - Cannes, Castellón, Stavanger, Prague and Başakşehir - completed their roadmaps towards a climate and water resilient future through nature-based solutions (NBS). As a last step in a series of four co-creative workshop sessions, concrete projects were developed to help them move from today’s reality towards their desired vision for the year 2050. For this process, different sets of inspiration cards on relevant NBS, value creation, governance actions, financing options, and co-creation tools were developed to support the planning process with available scientific knowledge. These cards are now available for anybody to use who wants to spark their NBS discussions with some new ideas.

The overall roadmapping process involved a series of co-creative workshops and interviews with a wide range of city stakeholders covering four distinct steps: the setting of strategic ambitions for the city to reach climate resilience in 2050; the development of a joint vision for climate resilience in 2050; the assessment of the status quo in the urban system (current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and priorities); and a roadmapping workshop to develop specific nature-based solutions (NBS) and governance related projects to help achieving the vision.

A replication framework was developed to support and inspire the development of roadmaps in each of the cities. The replication framework consists of five sets of inspiration cards, which aim to spark new ideas and enrich discussions with insights from the work and findings in the UNaLab project. These cards include:

a) Different NBS and their performance;

b) The value creation of NBS in terms of the potential benefits and beneficiaries;

c) Different financing options;

d) Co-creation tools to be used for stakeholder engagement, and;

e) Governance actions that could support NBS uptake in cities.

All cards are available in English and Spanish. Some of the cards have also been translated into French, Czech, German and Turkish. The two-day workshops were run by local facilitators who were equipped with a facilitator’s manual and various templates.

The discussions leading up to the projects were just as important as the final projects themselves, because they allowed for an open exchange of ideas and challenges across different backgrounds. There was a detailed debate on a specific complex topic. Plenty of time and a detailed structure: a great method!

Through the roadmapping, we have achieved a new opportunity to develop an urban agenda for the whole city. I think we also made a great step forward in establishing NBS as a common approach in the governance system of our city.

Feedback from two workshop participants

The next step will be to further develop the replication framework and translate it into an online format, which will bring together the main results and knowledge generated within the project in a structured way.

If you are interested in downloading a copy of the inspiration cards, you can find them here.

If you are interested in taking part of some of the other workshop materials, feel free to get in touch!