Participatory planning of nature-based strategies to cope with drought risk in Medina del Campo Aquifer, Spain

Abstract:

River basins around the world are increasingly exposed to water related risks. To provide the necessary protection and resilience, nature-based solutions (NBS) are promoted as a multi-purpose alternative to grey infrastructure. Combined with institutional and other measures, NBS are claimed to not only reduce risks, but provide additional societal benefits and increase its overall resilience. The uptake of NBS in policy is however hampered by uncertainties related to the absence of clear evaluation of NBS performance, institutional and regulatory barriers, funding/financing barriers and knowledge and acceptance barriers.

To overcome these barriers, we propose participatory planning as a transdisciplinary approach to co-design NBS strategies for drought risk and environmental degradation. The approach is based on strategic planning and composed of several steps combining stakeholder interviews and participatory workshops. The aim is for stakeholders and scientists to jointly vision, select, assess, and validate risk reduction strategies composed of nature-based and grey infrastructure as well as management and institutional measures.

The approach has been applied to the case of Medina del Campo aquifer in Spain, located in a region that is prone to periodic droughts. The area heavily relies on groundwater extraction to offset surface water shortages and meet local water demands. Intensive exploitation of the aquifer over the last decades has led to quantitative and qualitative degradation of the aquifer and its associated ecosystems. The river basin authority faces the challenge to revert the aquifer’s degradation to comply with the Water Framework Directive objectives, while maintaining the socio-economic prosperity in a depopulating area that is heavily relying on rural economy.

The implementation of the participatory planning approach allowed the co-development of two nature-based strategies, based on a joint validation of environmental, social and economic assessments informing feasibility and foreseeable efficacy of the measures. In addition, social, technical and knowledge-capacity barriers for implementation were identified, allowing the River Basin Authority to define additional measures or incentives in the planning process.