Co-development of semi-quantitative climate resilient development pathways for the city of Logroño, Spain

As cities work towards becoming more resilient, they encounter a range of challenges related to adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development. Often, these challenges are addressed in silos, with efforts focusing either on isolated aspects or on just two of the three objectives at a time, leaving a truly integrated approach unmet. Climate Resilient Development Pathways (CRDP) aim to integrate adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development over time, taking into account (deep) uncertainties about climate change and other sources of uncertainty. These pathways support the integrated planning and execution of climate action, while maximising synergies and minimising trade-offs between adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development.

A novel systematic approach has been developed to operationalise CRDP, using the well-established method for adaptation pathways, “Dynamic Adaptive Pathways Planning (DAPP)”, as a starting point. This novel approach, CRDAPP, starts by envisioning multiple desirable futures and understanding the decision context and current policy objectives and actions for adaptation, mitigation and development. Thereafter, the synergies and trade-offs are assessed between the different climate actions, and policy relevant tipping points are identified – meaning points in time when new actions will be required. Next, alternative pathways are formulated of desirable actions for climate resilient development over time. The final outcome is a pathways map, as well as an implementation and monitoring plan.

To date, the novel CRDAPP approach has only been applied qualitatively. In this study, we demonstrate how the approach can be used to develop semi-quantitative pathways co-created with the city of Logroño, Spain. Special focus is placed on showing how existing climate services and tools can support the development of CRDP with substantive quantitative scientific evidence, e.g. for identifying combined hotspots for climate risks and social vulnerability, or for understanding the effectiveness of different measures, both crucial aspects to develop CRDP. Tools for quantitatively evaluating the interactions between adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development objectives and measures are also explored for Logroño. However, we identify the development of tools and services that offer a quantitative assessment of these interactions as an area requiring further research, to progress towards fully quantified CRDP.

Throughout the co-development process, the municipality of Logroño gained valuable insights into the range of options for achieving resilient urban futures over time, as well as strategies for sequencing measures in the context of climate change. The climate resilient development pathways provide helpful support to the municipality in advancing integrated climate action planning, aligning adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development efforts.