The REACHOUT series of interviews aim at collecting more personal views from colleagues developing and applying climate services for urban adaptation and resilient development, get more insight on the state of knowledge, the main ongoing discourse, and get a more concrete view of what their work encompasses. A sneak peek, so to say, behind the jargon and throbbing sentences used in policy documents and research proposals. Throughout the project, team members will complete a round of interviews. One colleague will interview another, and the interviewed colleague then conducts the following interview of the next team member and so on. As each member interviews and gets interviewed in this manner, all topics will be covered over the duration of this project. Read our latest interview with James Strout, Technical Expert at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) and Elena Garrido Martínez, Representative of the Municipality of Logroño.

Elena, what was the motivating factor for the City of Logroño to join REACHOUT? In the last few years, the Logroño Municipality has been committed to implementing several actions and initiatives closely linked to the environmental area, defining plans to promote mitigation, adaptation to climate change or sustainable urban development, such as the Urban Agenda, the Adaptation Plan and the Green Shield. We even presented our candidacy for Green Capital 2025, but I believe that Logroño had never taken such a decisive step as being part of a European innovation and research project such as REACHOUT. I think that the main reason for joining the project was to have the opportunity to learn and to get to know the solutions that are really effective to tackle climate change, and especially to adapt them in a clearer way to the needs of the city. I see it as a natural evolution process towards the adoption of urban measures that increasingly prioritise the improvement of the quality of life of the citizens of Logroño through the promotion of urban actions that focus on the conservation of resources, the enhancement of green spaces, the reduction of emissions and such. In this sense REACHOUT is a good roadmap to follow!

Has working with climate stories raised awareness and interest among your colleagues in the municipality regarding using story telling as a communication tool to reach Logroño’s citizens? Until we became part of the project and as far as I know, our Municipality had never worked with climate stories.  I have to say that it has been very worthwhile for all of us. My colleagues have told me several times that it has proved to be a very effective tool when communicating with the public and also with decision-makers.

Sometimes it is difficult to communicate the value or the meaning of the work that is being developed in the project, and how all of this is linked to our daily lives beyond the technical or scientific field. It can be challenging to reach citizens and colleagues from other departments for example. I think that with the climate story we have been able to make all these elements understandable.

Recently we organised a street activity with the public, where we wanted to show them some details of the climate story with the thermal and vulnerability maps. It was satisfying to see how everyone was interested, especially the youngest ones, in getting to know the characters in the story, in seeing the effects of heat on people or how it affects the city in general.