Nerea Saiz Bezanilla, a student of the Degree in Geography and Territorial Planning at the University of Cantabria, completed and defended her Final Degree Project (FDP) on maladaptation to climate change, supervised by Cecilia Ribalaygua Batalla. The project develops tools to identify and prevent maladaptation, understood as those adaptation actions that, due to inadequate management, may end up increasing risk or vulnerability. In response to this risk, the study highlights projects that get things right.

To this end, the author systematically analyzed ten climate change adaptation actions carried out in different Spanish regions, including the project LIFE-myBUILDINGisGREEN: Nature-Based Solutions in Schools, implemented at the CEIP Gabriela Mistral school in Solana de los Barros (Extremadura). Building on the self-assessment tool from the European REGILIENCE project, adapted to the study’s objectives, she developed a sixteen-question questionnaire that makes it possible to identify the potential maladaptive processes of each action and their causes.

 Analysis sheet of the project in the FDP, with its location and one of the installed green roofs © Nerea Saiz Bezanilla

The results place LIFE-myBUILDINGisGREEN among the best-rated actions in the set analyzed: it is the one showing the lowest presence of maladaptation among the ten, reflecting the care with which its Nature-Based Solutions were designed and implemented. The study also notes that the best results occur in projects that involve numerous stakeholders and work across several territorial scales — two characteristic features of LIFE-myBUILDINGisGREEN, which brings together public administrations, research centers, and national and international partners.

Among its general conclusions, the study underlines that most responsible entities are still unfamiliar with the concept of maladaptation and lack tools to identify it. In this context, demonstration projects like LIFE-myBUILDINGisGREEN take on added value: they not only adapt educational buildings to climate change through green roofs, green facades, ventilation, and permeable pavements, but also serve as a replicable example of how to adapt while avoiding unwanted effects.

From LIFE-myBUILDINGisGREEN, we thank Nerea Saiz Bezanilla for her interest in the project and congratulate her on the excellent work carried out. Initiatives like this contribute to the dissemination, transferability, and monitoring of the project’s results beyond its execution.

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