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Nature restoration lands in local councils: from Brussels to your neighbourhood park
For years, European environmental policy has felt distant, almost abstract. Regulations, strategies, targets for 2050… But the new Nature Restoration Regulation breaks with that logic: it comes down to earth. Literally — placing local councils at the centre of the action. Because this time we are not just talking about protecting remote natural spaces. We…
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Green for a Few: Urban Environmental Inequality and the Challenge of a Just Green Transition
Introducing green infrastructure in cities is not, in itself, an innovative element, but doing so through a social justice lens emerges as the key differentiating factor. Green infrastructure goes beyond the mere provision of landscaped or gardened areas; rather, like any infrastructure, it seeks to provide certain services to the population. In this case, it…
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Sponge Cities: The silent revolution in urban water management. Lessons from China for Bilbao and its surrounding area.
Sponge cities are much more than a strategy for adapting to flood risk. They allow us to look at the urban landscape beyond its current surface appearance, to understand it through the natural territory on which it stands, and to redesign it in line with the ecological characteristics and context that sustain it. A few…
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Main barriers to implementing nature-based solutions
Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) face several challenges in order to normalise their widespread implementation. All of them are to some extent related to two realities. That NBS are something new and, like any process, require a path to mass implementation. And that, by their very nature, they are worth the redundancy, they are living elements that…
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Climate and biodiversity loss issues addressed by Nature-Based Solutions
Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) are a revolutionary approach to integrating natural systems into urban and rural development, offering multiple environmental, social and economic benefits. Rather than being limited to conservation, NBS promote the active restoration and enhancement of ecosystems to address challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and urban resilience. NBS include a wide range…
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Regeneration of nature
The European Union’s new legislation on nature restoration, a regulation that changes the paradigm of environmental protection across the continent, has been adopted with no small amount of difficulty and in extremis. In a way, this new regulation recognises the inadequacy of current conservation policies and commits to strengthening them through an active restoration policy….
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The “Boom” of Wind Energy in the Basque Country under analysis
Renewable energies are here to stay. In the Basque Country, there is an incipient “boom” in wind farm projects. It is time to reflect on the territorial model we want, beyond the energy model we need. The energy transition has to be made, but not in any old way. It is clear that the energy…
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School Agenda 2030: Driving the social transformation of the municipality from the classrooms
Almost a decade has passed since the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted within the framework of the United Nations. They replaced the Millennium Development Goals, and from 2015 to the present day they have permeated all administrative levels with a range of 17 colours, one per goal. At the municipal level, the introduction of…
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Body-Territory: A Participatory Experience of Socio-environmental and Urban-Territorial Diagnosis in Buenos Aires
The tandem Body-Territory is a concept that is born within Latin American decolonial currents. This concept is based on the conceptualisations of indigenous peoples, where the perception of corporeality differs from that of the West. The body is understood as an extension of the territory and not as an element that limits what is their…