The IMAGINE adaptation team is currently teaching a module in the Masters in City Resilience Design and Management at the International University of Catalonia (UIC), in Barcelona.
In this Masters’ program, students hailing from all corners of the globe immerse themselves in a comprehensive, multidisciplinary exploration of urban resilience and sustainability. This exploration is facilitated through a structured curriculum, comprising five distinct modules:
- Resilience theory
- Resilience of infrastructure and the built environment
- Resilience and nature-based solutions
- Community resilience
- Urban resilience implementation
Our team is teaching within the first module, covering aspects of climate resilience and urban climate adaptation.
Marta Olazabal introduces the critical and profound societal challenges that climate change poses for cities and dives into solutions, measures, and approaches to mitigate and adapt to these changes at the local level.
Ana Amorim-Maia delves into the general development process and content structure of local climate adaptation plans, providing students with a strong foundation in the principles, concepts, and actions that underpin effective climate adaptation planning.
William Lewis equips students with tools to track and assess local adaptation policies, introducing a valuable tool to measure the credibility of climate plans.
Finally, Sean Goodwin rounds off the module by presenting innovative monitoring and evaluation techniques, providing new perspectives on how to comprehend whether cities are effectively adapting to climate change.
By the end of the module, students are well-prepared to grasp the essence of climate change adaptation. They understand how to design and implement a climate adaptation action plan, evaluate the credibility of existing climate policies, and employ effective monitoring and evaluation methods to gauge adaptation progress.
This module aligns well with the core objectives of the IMAGINE adaptation project, which are to (re)define successful adaptation in order to better monitor and evaluate progress in this critical arena. We are committed to nurturing the next generation of urban resilience practitioners, empowering them to lead the way in building more sustainable cities for the future.
Evaluating Urban nature-based solutions: What Makes Good Information?
In recent years, nature-based solutions (NbS) have gained traction as a vital strategy for addressing the interconnected challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality in urban environments. However, measuring the effectiveness of these solutions, particularly in terms of their contribution to climate adaptation, requires a nuanced understanding of what constitutes relevant and useful information.
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The ultimate challenge
Peter Eckersley from Nottingham Business School in Nottingham Trent University, and Marta Olazabal from IMAGINE Adaptation contribute to the special issue with an opinion article "Adapting to climate change: the ultimate challenge for the next half-century of local government?"
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Radio Collaboration: Climate Change and the 21st Century
The first quarter of the 21st Century is nearly over. What have we achieved so far? What are the challenges that we are going to face over the next 25 years?
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“We need to rethink urbanism”
Marta Olazabal gave an interview (in Spanish) to the local Radio Euskadi this past weekend.
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What is limiting how we imagine adaptation?
We are happy to tell you that our new open-access review paper is out now in the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability.
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Cities need more than green fixes to climate change.
Sean Goodwin recently gave an interview (in Spanish) for Equipamento y Servicios Municipales on the potential for green infrastructure in cities.
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Using intersectionality to localise the GGA
We are happy to share our viewpoint published in the Special Issue “Navigating the Nexus: Intersectional Climate Justice in Urban Adaptation Planning” of the journal Cities. This opinion article has been written by Ana Terra Amorim-Maia and Marta Olazabal.
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Wondering how to evaluate justice in climate adaptation projects at the city level?
Our colleague and collaborator Maria Ruiz de Gopegui asked herself that in her PhD research.
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Urban adaptation: disrupting imaginaries and practices
Vanesa Castan-Broto, Marta Olazabal and Gina Ziervogel have guest edited a quite special special issue in the fantastic journal Buildings and Cities. The special issue aims to enlarge the range of adaptation narratives grounded in experiences from cities worldwide.
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Reflecting on our recent workshop: Disentangling Successful Adaptation Using Theory of Change
Last week, the IMAGINE Adaptation hosted an international workshop on “Disentangling successful adaptation using theory of change” in Bergen, Norway. Our aim was to create a collaborative space for rethinking and identifying the changes needed for effective climate adaptation.
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