UNIA Summer Course: “Nature Based Solutions and Circular Economy”

The International University of Andalusia together with the collaboration of UICN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, organized one more year summer courses in the city of Malaga from September 6 to 10, 2021. Bioazul has had the pleasure to participate for the second consecutive year as a speaker in the summer course dedicated to “Nature Based Solutions and Circular Economy against climate change in the province of Malaga“.

This course on NBS and circular economy, is directed by Enrique Salvo (Chair UNIA-IUCN), the professor of the University of Malaga (UMA) Marcos Castro and the member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Andrés Alcántara. During 5 days, aspects related to climate scenarios were analyzed, as well as the translation of resilience in terms of the need for new economic, urban and energy models for the territory, oriented towards the design of more humane, ecological and socially just cities.

One of the prominent speakers of this course was Salvador Rueda, president of the Urban Ecology Foundation, who pointed out that the increase in temperatures, as a result of climate change, will make “the Guadalquivir Valley, in a few decades, uninhabitable ”. In spite of this climate emergency perspective, Rueda considers himself optimistic already put by “rethinking cities” and betting on a new model of city where a wide variety of basic services and public facilities are available 300 meters from the house, achieving that people move on foot or by bike.

Our CEO Antonia Lorenzo was who taught the session entitled “The SbN Málaga Cluster model. SBN Good Practices in the province of Malaga”. In this session she explained the role of blue infrastructures, alone or in combination with NBS, in our cities in a context of climate change. Some of the data that she highlighted were the importance of sustainable management of water resources in a context of climate change and population growth, since they influence the availability and quantity of the resource, its quality and natural disasters associated with water. In addition, she presented the success stories of some of our projects in the framework of water reuse and the circular economy such as RichWater, AquaSure, FIT4REUSE, PAVITR and Water2REturn.

She also talked about the work that is being carried out through the Connecting Nature project to re-naturalize the city of Malaga and introduce Nature-Based Solutions in the city.