Ihobe, the Basque Government’s environmental management agency, has set up a trailblazing work to foster nature-based solutions (NBS) in the Basque Country. This group – made up of over 40 stakeholders from the whole value chain – has embarked on an intense participatory process. 

The members of the group include representatives of local councils such as those of Bilbao, Donostia, Getxo and Legazpi; public authorities beyond municipal level such as Bizkaia Provincial Government and Naturklima; innovation centres and universities including Tecnalia, BC3 and UPV/EHU; associations and clusters such as Aclima and Bilbao Urban; architecture and design companies including Krean, AECOM and Lur Studio; and NBS installers such as Tekura, ZinCo Cubiertas Ajardinadas and Cementos Hanson-Rezola. This participant diversity ensures a collaborative and holistic approach to drive nature-based solutions in the Basque Country.          

Analysis: barriers and opportunities

The current situation of nature-based solutions in the Basque Country was analysed in the first session. The identified barriers include the lack of design criteria and legislation, the lack of commitment of the stakeholders involved and of knowledge and experience in this regard. To a lesser extent, other barriers identified by the stakeholders are the difficulties to find appropriate suppliers, limited access to available public funding, and legal and institutional barriers. 

In this context, the participants prioritised several NBS with high potential to be applied in the territory, such as rewilding the public space, sustainable urban drainage systems to ease the burden on conventional sanitation systems, rewilding transport infrastructures, green or mixed roofs, and rewilding schoolyards.

The initiative seeks to foster the rewilding of industrial and urban environments and advance towards a more sustainable and resilient territorial model

The second session focused on defining specific measures to overcome the detected barriers and facilitate the rolling out of NBS. Over 20 actions, grouped into four main areas – citizen awareness, financing, planning and design criteria, and legislation – were pinpointed. 

The prioritised measures were presented and over 500 contributions were gathered in the third session. 

The key findings include the need to raise citizen awareness about NBS as a tool to adapt to climate change; drive holistic NBS demonstrations from design; implementing and monitoring projects to rewild the public space and to use sustainable urban drainage (SUDs) in the sanitation systems, which will allow the cost-effectiveness of those systems compared to the conventional ones to be assessed; dissemination of NBS interventions on public access platforms; the integration of NBS criteria in current legislation: dissemination of NBS interventions on public access platforms; the integration of criteria with NBS in current legislation; along with small grants to install SUDs.

The working group agreed to continue monitoring the measures and assessing its results in order to consolidate a stable partnership network to drive NBS in the Basque Country. 

A partnership model for the future

94% of the participants assessed the working group’s initiative as satisfactory or very satisfactory. They all agreed on the importance of keeping the working group active and to further progress in the implementation of the NBS. 

They are currently over 90 projects of this type in 54 Basque municipalities, which places the Basque country in a leadership position in this area in Europe.