Presentation short abstract

We share learnings from a knowledge co-creation process aimed at reclaiming the biocultural memory of Bilbao outskirts. From a transdisciplinary approach, we produced a collective cartography that traces changing socioecological bonds and highlights social capacities to face environmental challenges

Presentation long abstract

The neighbourhoods Betolaza, Circunvalación and Uretamendi were constructed hand by hand by rural migrants from Spanish areas that moved to Bilbao outskirts in the 50´s. They settled in the slopes of Arraiz mountain, organized themselves to get public services and transform the environmental conditions of the area. Our research project aimed at enhancing social equity in planning of nature based solutions (NbS) in urban contexts. We explored how NbS can be anchored in an understanding of environmental history and socio-ecological relations. We worked together with local organizations, decision-makers, technicians, professionals in a transdisciplinary process combining approaches from environmental sciences, ethnobiology, sociology and political ecology. Through interviews, workshops, participatory mapping and quantitative sociodemographic analysis, we recovered biocultural memories of the area in a map and a booklet of stories. The stories told relate the social organization, the sense of community and the ways of organizing collectively in the face of adverse environmental situations such as floods and wildfires. They also uncover the bonds with their environment, like kid games in the mountains, the journey of underground rivers or the formation of community orchards. In this presentation we will share the resulting cartography of environmental histories, that speaks of the transformation of socio-ecological relationships over urbanization and the existing yet often invisible social capacities to cope with adverse climatic events.