Are SUDS a good nature-based solution for Galician cities?

Nature-based solutions are an emerging and increasingly necessary tool in the fight against climate change and to improve the living conditions of city residents.
 

Within them, sustainable drainage systems (SUDS), for the use in irrigation and creation of wetlands in the green areas of the cities, could be interesting in the future in Galicia.
 

The last meteorological events show us the reality of increasingly extreme situations, with alternating cycles of days with very high rainfall of stormy and subtropical regime to periods of dry and high temperatures.
 

In these situations that are becoming more and more frequent in Galicia, these solutions, which due to their urban and civil construction component take time to adopt and implement, must take into account the conditions of each city and its context. Conditions such as topography, soil types and configuration of the water table and aquifers can make such solutions unfeasible or counterproductive.
 

These and other initiatives were discussed and shown on the ground during last week's Conexus 2024 Conference in Barcelona, a city with an important experience in SUDS.
 

The CONEXUS project where the LaboraTe team worked during the last 4 years in the activity "2.1 Contextualization" is a project of the H2020 program of the European Union that through Life Labs in 3 major European and 4 Latin American cities studied nature-based solutions in urban contexts.

Here you can find the program and various materials of this conference that concentrates and summarizes the knowledge accumulated and put into practice in 7 Life Labs during the 4 years of the project. Particularly interesting for the city of Lugo, because of our urban gardens, is also the material of the Life Lab of Barcelona that focused on the environmental and social aspects of these gardens and their benefits.