From November 21 to 24, the XVI edition of the National Environmental Congress (CONAMA 2022) was held in Madrid at the IFEMA Municipal Conference Center.
Within the framework of the National Environmental Congress, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, the LIFE Garachico project participated in different activities.
LIFE Garachico seeks to make populations more resilient, that is, they have a greater capacity to anticipate, prepare, respond and recover from extreme coastal events. For this, the neighbors have a fundamental role in the strategic framework proposed in the project. In addition to being developed on the island of Tenerife (Garachico), it has a methodology that will be exported to other parts of the island such as Puerto de la Cruz and Praia de Vitória (Azores) to propose a system for early detection and response to floods that cause adverse coastal phenomena.
On the first day of CONAMA 2022, LIFE Garachico has participated in "Insular connection-Speed dates of insular projects": a work meeting between different professionals to exchange information and establish alliances. Members of the LIFE Garachico project have had the opportunity to present the objectives, methodological framework and progress made during the 15 months that the project has been running, as well as learn about other initiatives and activities that are being developed in the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands related to the environment and the fight against climate change.
During the day of the 22nd, LIFE Garachico was disseminated with great success in the activity "Innovation projects for local sustainability" in the space CONAMA Innovates, where initiatives that are leading the transformation towards more sustainable societies were presented. Gustavo Pestana Pérez, Head of the Climate Change and Environmental Information Service of the Vice-Ministry for the Fight against Climate Change and Ecological Transition of the Government of the Canary Islands, presented the innovations presented by the project, such as risk assessment considering a social, economic and environment, reducing uncertainty in the analysis process.
On the third day, the technical session was held "Adaptation to climate change in municipal planning", in which the importance of adaptation to climate change in the work of municipal planning and management has been contextualized, in a coherent and integrated way between the different municipal plans, strategies and policies.
Within the technical session, Laura Comes Aguilar, Technical Coordinator of the LIFE Garachico project (Tragsa), was in charge of the presentation "LIFE Garachico, Adaptation to coastal flooding due to the effect of climate change through flexible strategies in urban areas of the Macaronesia” where the need to have knowledge about the coastal front and about the community where the measures will be developed was stressed, in order to draft protocols that meet the needs of the municipalities.
LIFE Garachico proposes the development of an innovative Strategic Framework for Flexible Adaptation based on the combination of a holistic characterization of flood risk and the evaluation of acceptable levels of this risk by the local population. With the objective of contributing effectively to increase the resilience of the urban communities of Macaronesia against extreme coastal events due to climate change.
