Urban Klima 2050

The Basque Country is among the regions that have disclosed an Energy Transition and Climate Change Planning for its territories. The region has a long history of working on climate objectives and is currently developing the 2050 Energy Transition and Climate Change Road Map.

The Urban Klima 2050 project (LIFE18 IPC/ES/000001) is the result of collaboration between:

• four distinct levels of governance
• various Basque government departments
• the three provincial councils
• seven municipal councils (including the three provincial capitals)
• five research and technology centres

The project has a direct investment of EUR 19.8 million, 51% of which is funded by the European Union through the LIFE Programme (Integrated Projects for the mitigation of and/or adaptation to climate change). It aims to advance on climate governance at all administrative levels and promote climate change integration in several sectorial policies, such as health, water resource management and energy, among others. Furthermore, it focuses on demonstration and action, as well as developing mechanisms to work hand in hand with local administrations towards local climate action and tools for citizenship empowerment on climate action.

Urban Klima 2050 has a dual objective: mitigation and adaptation in three areas of intervention: urban and peri-urban areas, river basins and coastal areas. In this sense, the mitigation objective focuses on the strategy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the consumption of renewable energies and promoting sustainable mobility. Meanwhile the adaptation objective focuses on increasing territorial resilience to climate change through concrete interventions in the territory.

To achieve these two objectives, forty concrete actions are being implemented. These actions are divided in 5 blocks:

• ANALYSE: Review of Energy Transition and Climate Change planning with a continuous improvement approach, and expansion of the climate risk analysis of the Basque Country by focusing on a new climate ambition context to meet the challenges we are facing.
• DEFINE: Definition of how, where and when to act to reduce GHG emissions, increase absorption and achieve territorial resilience. Climate Change is being integrated into land management and the urban approach and guidelines are being developed for integrating climate change into health, water and energy policies.
• ACT: Launch of pilot projects at three levels of intervention, scalable to other areas of the Basque Country and to other regions.
• EMPOWER: Work with Public Administrations and the community to promote climate awareness and to move towards action. Facilitation of the change through training and designing new tools.
• MANAGE: Creation of structures to facilitate climate governance and climate change observation and monitoring.

"The Life Urban Klima 2050 project is the largest climate action project in the Basque Country, in which twenty local councils, public bodies, universities and technology centres, under the leadership of the Basque Government, are dedicating resources and generating knowledge to create an ecosystem of multi-level climate governance and to multiply the impacts of the pilot interventions. These solutions are being tested in three areas of intervention: coast, river basins and urban/peri-urban areas. With the Urban Klima 2050 project, we are defining how, where and when to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase absorptions and achieve the resilience of the territory. We are also empowering the public administration and working on raising awareness to move citizens to action".

Arantxa Tapia Otaegi, Minister for Economic Development, Sustainability and Environment of the Basque Government

In summary, these actions are implemented under the Basque Country's vision for 2050 to be a competitive carbon-neutral economy, which can adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects through innovation and a knowledge-based climate change policy.

Through the Urban Klima 2050 project, the Basque Country, a member of the Under2Coalition, Regions4, and committed to the Regions Race to Resilience and the Regions Race to Zero campaigns, has demonstrated that it is a region at the forefront of the efforts to tackle climate change.

Urban Klima 2050 project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvsTbAWavVE

CDP 2022: https://data.cdp.net/

Urban Klima 2050: https://www.urbanklima2050.eu/en/

LIFE IP Urban Klima 2050: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvsTbAWavVE

LIFE Program:https://cinea.ec.europa.eu/programmes/life_en

Regions4: https://www.regions4.org/

Under2Coalition: https://www.theclimategroup.org/under2-coalition

Regions Race to Zero: https://www.theclimategroup.org/join-race-to-zero