The Llobregat river basin, with an area of ​​4,930 km2 and a total length of 175 km, is the largest inland basin in Catalonia. The river originates in the Pyrenees Mountains and flows southward into the Mediterranean Sea near the city of Barcelona. It serves as the main water source for the city and its surrounding metropolitan area.

Historically, the Llobregat has played a major role in Catalonia’s development. The lower regions of the river basin are a biodiversity hotspot and offer a wide variety of ecosystem services to the nearby metropolitan areas, including the provision of food and fresh water. However, over-utilization for power generation, crop irrigation, over extraction, development and transport infrastructure has led to the lowest portion of the river becoming heavily compromised. The portion of the Llobregat basin within the metropolitan area represents only 4.74% of the total, corresponding to a highly human-influenced space.

Objectives:

1. Improve and integrate biodiversity recovery,
2. Promote multifunctionality of green spaces
3. Address knowledge gaps in terms of ecosystem services, NBS, urban planning, management, and governance
4. Develop an interactive online map outlining challenges and opportunities related to UF-NBS and other NBS

Through co-creation workshops and collective activities, the project is developing knowledge and conditions for locally appropriate nature-based solutions, especially those based on urban forests and woods.

The main objectives of the co-learning and co-creation workshops are to collect relevant information and address knowledge gaps in terms of Ecosystem services, NBS, urban planning, management and governance that have an impact on urban forestry beyond the project cycles.

The target audience was identified based on a previous stakeholder mapping, realized by Area Metropolitan Barcelona (AMB) and CREAF, a research centre. A rask force from both institutions was responsible for stakeholder selection, engagement and retention. Stakeholders come from the river’s metropolitan area municipalities, other local and regional administrations, research institutions, local NGOs and concerned citizens. The goal was to have diverse perspectives and encourage networking among people from different disciplines who all work in the fluvial space or are interested/deal with NBS and UF.

Some of the ongoing activities led by the AMB and related to small-scale NBS are refuges for biodiversity conversation, butterfly gardens, insect hotels, and pond renaturing.

Area Metropolitan Barcelona (AMB) and CREAF, a research centre, have collaborated to create the Llobregat&Co collaborative project.

The main administrations with territorial planning competences are the Generalitat (the government of Catalonia), municipalities, – namely town Councils of Castelldefels, Gavà, Viladecans, el Prat de Llobregat, l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Cornellà, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Santa Coloma de Cervelló, Sant Joan Despí, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Molins de Rei, Sant Vicenç dels Horts, Pallejà and el Papiol – and special urban organizations.

The institutional framework is completed by the two public consortia in this area, belonging to the City Councils, the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, Generalitat or Diputació de Barcelona (Barcelona Provincial Council). These are represented by the Consortium of Agrarian Park of Baix Llobregat and the Consortium of Natural Area of Llobregat Delta, corresponding to the network of protected areas.

Further local partners of the project include the Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA-SCIC), and AB (Waters from Barcelona).

The Llobregat&Co project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement n°821242. Additionally, several Chinese CLEARING HOUSE partners have also contributed to the funding.

The main outcomes of the workshops were:

• Establishing Priority ecosystem services in the area
• Facilitating knowledge exchange about the challenges from a multidisciplinary perspective and potential UF-NBS, including mapping them through affective cartography
• Facilitating networking among stakeholders
• Building a community centred around Llobregat&Co, as a potential Living Lab and base for future co-design sessions.

These outcomes have been georeferenced and made accessible in a GIS online viewer by AMB, ensuring the knowledge can be easily  visualized and shared. The tool is designed as a collective cartography to identify and enhance the ecosystem services provided by the river and its surrounds. It builds on the previous experience of AMB with online GIS tools and has been implemented as a direct response to the limitations imposed by the pandemic. The initial objective of the online viewer was to provide feed-back to all workshop participants and allow for visualization of combined collective results. The next phase involved promoting and providing open access to the online platform. Currently, the tool can collect contributions from stakeholders and citizens who may not have attended the workshops, thus expanding the initial scope and ambition. Furthermore, with the help of CREAF there are plans to analyze this data with the ultimate aim of extracting useful information for future planning and management of the fluvial space.

The lack of a clearly-defined governance model is a major barrier to the planning, design, and management of urban green spaces, particularly in the context of multiple involved, actors. Further consideration must be given to the potential impact of climate change events, such as river flooding. Conservation measures related to urbanization also prevent significant barriers. Knowledge gaps include a lack of data on biodiversity, key ecosystem services, and nature-based solutions (NBS), insufficient data on riparian forests and river pollutants, and a need for better institutional collaboration and policy frameworks at the metropolitan level to enable better planning and implementation of NBS.

In Barcelona, three main challenges were identified that can be clustered in the themes: technology, dissemination and data interpretation. The first, technology, posed a big challenge as the interface needed to be customized in order to make the most of the available technology (ArcGIS Platform by ESRI). The second challenge was dissemination of information, specifically how to promote the tool to people who were not involved in the workshops so they might also contirbute their information to the system. The third key challenge was ensuring data representativeness and determining how to handle it.

This project highlights the importance of collaboration between regional administrations, research institutions, municipalities, NGOs, and citizens. The co-creation workshops and collective activities fostered knowledge sharing, networking, and the engagement of a wide array of stakeholders. This lesson can be transferred to other projects aiming to implement nature-based solutions (NBS) or address environmental challenges, emphasizing the need for multi-stakeholder collaboration and participatory approaches.

Furthermore, the project recognized the importance of addressing knowledge gaps regarding ecosystem services, urban planning, management, and governance. Utilizing online GIS tools and participatory mapping enabled data sharing and visualization. This approach can be applied in other contexts to identify knowledge gaps, collect relevant information, and promote open access to information, enabling better planning and management of natural resources.

Clearing House: Metrópolis Barcelona (2023) CLEARING HOUSE | Metrópolis Barcelona. Available at: https://llobregatco.amb.cat/index_es.html (Accessed: 27 May 2023).

Llobregat Valley, Spain (2023) Llobregat Valley, Spain | Connecting Nature. Available at: https://connectingnature.eu/oppla-case-study/22293 (Accessed: 27 May 2023).

Urban Forest co-creators united by the River Llobregat in Barcelona (2023) Clearing House H2020. Available at: https://clearinghouseproject.eu/2021/10/25/urban-forest-co-creators-united-by-the-river-llobregat-in-barcelona/ (Accessed: 27 May 2023).