Marta Olazabal
Biographic Data
| ID | 1581453 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marta Olazabal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marta |
| FAMILY NAME | Olazabal |
| SIGNATURE | OLAZABAL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ikerbasque |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3381-0654 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 114 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 34 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Pioneering Spanish experience in climate shelters practice
Public green space adaptation and real estate market dynamics
As climate resilience becomes central to urban planning, cities increasingly use urban greening to mitigate climate risks. Integrating nature into urban environments – especially through public green spaces – provides substantial environmental and health benefits. However, these interventions also reshape urban space and property values, often reinforcing socio-spatial inequalities by favouring affluent areas or displacing vulnerable communities.…
Knowledge diversity for climate change adaptation
As climate-driven extreme weather events continue to intensify, risk mitigation and governance are a critical aspect of urban climate change adaptation. Interdisciplinary knowledge integration is critical in order to account for varied perspectives related to the impacts of extreme weather events on urban systems. Despite advances made to integrate different strands of knowledge through systems-based approaches, few methods exist to contextualize…
Explaining the adaptation gap through consistency in adaptation planning
Who leads, who lags? Inter-urban inequities in European climate adaptation funding and financing
Despite increased attention to climate finance in urban adaptation, empirical data on the socio-political processes shaping funding accessibility, allocation, and their implications for inter-urban adaptation progress remains limited. In a first-of-its-kind survey, we analyse results from 148 urban administrations across 17 EU countries. Our results reveal widespread funding shortages (>85% of administrations), insufficient staff capacity (73%) a…
A review of everyday urban adaptations
Everyday practices are increasingly recognised as key to adapting to climate change. They emerge as especially important in cities where the complexity and uncertainty of the compound effects of crises and socio-economic contexts are a cradle for individual and community action. However, little is known regarding what constitutes everyday adaptation and how everyday urban adaptations help to effectively reduce climate risks. We conducted a system…
The underexplored potential of the arts in environmental social sciences
During the last two decades, there has been a growing focus on art-science collaborations in the field of environmental social sciences. Often still seen as an end-of-pipe tool for education and communicating scientific ideas, here, we call for broadening the arts and science interdisciplinary space, emphasising the role of art in knowledge co-production and participatory research in environmental social sciences. In particular, our perspective s…
Revisiting the challenges to monitoring, evaluation, reporting, and learning for climate adaptation
Monitoring, evaluation, reporting, and learning (MERL) is a key mechanism for advancing climate change adaptation by enabling reflection, preparation and improvement. While challenges to MERL are typically grouped into conceptual, empirical, and methodological categories, emerging issues demand attention as adaptation practice matures. These challenges are pressing for two reasons. First, the maturing field of adaptation introduces complex challe…
Beyond adjustment
Ambiguity and risk narratives dominate high-level definitions of adaptation. • Current debates call for a paradigm shift in climate adaptation. • We interview 50 global experts with 950 years of combined experience. • We identify 4 narratives, 4 realisations, and 2 catalysts shaping evolving views. • We propose an adaptation heuristic framework to fit current thought and practice. Climate change adaptation is central to political and scientific a…
A relational turn in climate change adaptation
The emergence of nature-based solutions (NbS) in science, policy, and practice signals a paradigmatic shift in urban climate change adaptation, yet empirical investigations into its impact on adaptation definitions and progress tracking remain scarce. Addressing this gap, we conducted thematic analysis on semi-structured interviews ( n = 15) with practitioners responsible for implementing and evaluating urban NbS in different countries. We provid…
Connecting the present to the future
Local priorities shape the way urban adaptation to climate change is envisioned. Yet processes to capture these priorities often overlook the power dynamics behind structural vulnerabilities. Approaches to positive futures thinking that are transdisciplinary offer a way to centre local communities in the process. However, these approaches are often limited as communities struggle to conceive climate change beyond their known realities and lived e…
What is limiting how we imagine climate change adaptation
Imaginaries of adaptation are currently dominated by technocratic, homogenous, top-down approaches that hinder sustainable, just, and effective adaptation worldwide. We have identified three practices that contribute to this problem: (1) an assumption of universality in adaptation; (2) a neglect of pluralistic knowledge systems and values; and (3) an oversimplification of adaptation processes. These three practices have been found to lead to repr…
Disrupting the imaginaries of urban action to deliver just adaptation
Highlights Urban adaptation relates to how people imagine plausible and desirable urban futures. Adaptation imaginaries refer to collective representations of how society should act and towards which goal in the context of unprecedented climate change impacts. However, the existing narratives of adaptation action tend to entrench actions that may not be beneficial in the long term and may lead to maladaptation and inequities. This is the case, fo…
Measuring the contribution of nature-based solutions beyond climate adaptation in cities
MEL for urban NbS must account for the diversity of co-benefits they may provide. • Current MEL practices for NbS favour ecological over social (justice) benefits. • Good information for use within MEL is defined by local socio-political dynamics. • Effective MEL for NbS needs flexible guidelines that can be contextualised locally. • Bridging the interests and needs of diverse actors is crucial for successful MEL. Measuring the contribution of ur…
Localising the Global Goal on Adaptation through intersectional thinking
Adapting to climate change
Climate change will have a disproportionate and asymmetric impact on cities and urban areas, and some of their most vulnerable residents will be at particular risk. Studies have found that some municipalities have done far more to adapt to it than others, but there has been a general lack of funding, implementation and engagement with marginalised groups to help them prepare. We suggest that the unpredictable and evolving nature of climate impact…
Global mapping of urban nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation
Adaptation to climate change in cities of Mediterranean Europe
Cities across Mediterranean Europe face common climatic threats. They are highly vulnerable and very likely to suffer losses and damages due to heat waves, droughts, wildfires, landslides, and extreme coastal events. To this date, however, there is no systematic understanding of how cities in Mediterranean Europe are preparing to adapt to these impacts. To address this question, we analyse local adaptation plans in 73 cities located in 51 regions…
Socio-economic projections in urban climate change adaptation planning
Urban climate change adaptation efforts have often been criticized for exacerbating the inequitable impacts of climate change by failing to address the social, economic, and environmental impacts of adaptation. There is an urgent need to incorporate equity and justice concerns in adaptation planning as well as approaches and tools that enable such integration. However, climate justice scholarship to date has largely focused on theoretical questio…
Adaptation to Climate Change in Cities of the Mediterranean Europe
Institutionalisation of urban climate adaptation
Comparative studies of urban adaptation have evaluated the progress, means and scope of adaptation planning. Practice on the ground shows that the local politics of climate adaptation advance through various strategies to align different interests and spheres of action or disrupt mainstream practices, which translates into a wide range of interventions. This paper focuses on understanding the dynamics and tools that enable the institutionalisatio…
A policy content analysis for evaluating urban adaptation justice in İstanbul
Will climate mitigation ambitions lead to carbon neutrality? An analysis of the local-level plans of 327 cities in the EU
Adaptation planning in large cities is unlikely to be effective
The assessment of public adaptation policies, strategies and plans to evaluate progress, effectiveness and long-term sustainability is challenging. The potential to develop an ex-post evaluation linked to outcomes is limited given the lack of policy implementation globally and the uncertainty related to when and how impacts will happen. Ex-ante evaluations, by contrast, seem more feasible when they focus on policy processes, contents and outputs.…
Subaltern forms of knowledge are required to boost local adaptation
Resilience trade-offs
The concept of urban resilience has so far been related mainly to climate change adaptation and disaster management perspectives. Here we aim to broaden the discussion by showing how the framework of urban resilience should be related to wider sustainability challenges, including i) climate change and natural hazard threats, ii) unsustainable urban metabolism patterns and iii) increasing social inequalities in cities. Using three case studies (fl…
Use of fuzzy cognitive maps to study urban resilience and transformation
Global mapping of urban nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation
Emergence of new knowledge for climate change adaptation
Decision-making for climate change adaptation requires an integrated and cross-sectoral approach to adequately capture the complexity of interconnected systems. More meaningful decisions can be taken in an arena where different agents provide knowledge of specific domains. This paper uses a semi-quantitative method based on cognitive mapping to demonstrate how new knowledge emerges when combining knowledge from diverse agents. For the case of hea…
Socio-economic projections in urban climate change adaptation planning
Urban climate change adaptation efforts have often been criticized for exacerbating the inequitable impacts of climate change by failing to address the social, economic, and environmental impacts of adaptation. There is an urgent need to incorporate equity and justice concerns in adaptation planning as well as approaches and tools that enable such integration. However, climate justice scholarship to date has largely focused on theoretical questio…
Disrupting the imaginaries of urban action to deliver just adaptation
Highlights Urban adaptation relates to how people imagine plausible and desirable urban futures. Adaptation imaginaries refer to collective representations of how society should act and towards which goal in the context of unprecedented climate change impacts. However, the existing narratives of adaptation action tend to entrench actions that may not be beneficial in the long term and may lead to maladaptation and inequities. This is the case, fo…
Institutionalisation of urban climate adaptation
Comparative studies of urban adaptation have evaluated the progress, means and scope of adaptation planning. Practice on the ground shows that the local politics of climate adaptation advance through various strategies to align different interests and spheres of action or disrupt mainstream practices, which translates into a wide range of interventions. This paper focuses on understanding the dynamics and tools that enable the institutionalisatio…
A policy content analysis for evaluating urban adaptation justice in İstanbul
Beyond adjustment
Ambiguity and risk narratives dominate high-level definitions of adaptation. • Current debates call for a paradigm shift in climate adaptation. • We interview 50 global experts with 950 years of combined experience. • We identify 4 narratives, 4 realisations, and 2 catalysts shaping evolving views. • We propose an adaptation heuristic framework to fit current thought and practice. Climate change adaptation is central to political and scientific a…
Measuring the contribution of nature-based solutions beyond climate adaptation in cities
MEL for urban NbS must account for the diversity of co-benefits they may provide. • Current MEL practices for NbS favour ecological over social (justice) benefits. • Good information for use within MEL is defined by local socio-political dynamics. • Effective MEL for NbS needs flexible guidelines that can be contextualised locally. • Bridging the interests and needs of diverse actors is crucial for successful MEL. Measuring the contribution of ur…
Adaptation to climate change in cities of Mediterranean Europe
Cities across Mediterranean Europe face common climatic threats. They are highly vulnerable and very likely to suffer losses and damages due to heat waves, droughts, wildfires, landslides, and extreme coastal events. To this date, however, there is no systematic understanding of how cities in Mediterranean Europe are preparing to adapt to these impacts. To address this question, we analyse local adaptation plans in 73 cities located in 51 regions…
A relational turn in climate change adaptation
The emergence of nature-based solutions (NbS) in science, policy, and practice signals a paradigmatic shift in urban climate change adaptation, yet empirical investigations into its impact on adaptation definitions and progress tracking remain scarce. Addressing this gap, we conducted thematic analysis on semi-structured interviews ( n = 15) with practitioners responsible for implementing and evaluating urban NbS in different countries. We provid…
Adapting to climate change
Climate change will have a disproportionate and asymmetric impact on cities and urban areas, and some of their most vulnerable residents will be at particular risk. Studies have found that some municipalities have done far more to adapt to it than others, but there has been a general lack of funding, implementation and engagement with marginalised groups to help them prepare. We suggest that the unpredictable and evolving nature of climate impact…
Guiding cities under increased droughts
Climate change is likely to increase droughts. The vulnerability of cities to droughts is increasing worldwide. Policy responses from cities to droughts lack consideration of long-term climatic and socio-economic scenarios, and focus on short-term emergency actions that disregard sustainability in the connected regional and river basin systems. We aim to explore the dynamics of the water-energy-land nexus in urban systems suffering increased clim…
How well do climate adaptation policies align with risk-based approaches? An assessment framework for cities
Many cities around the world are undertaking adaptation planning processes in contexts of considerable uncertainty due to climate risks. However, new evidence suggests that current adaptation policies are failing to fully incorporate risk-related information and knowledge. Understanding how policies account for current and future risks becomes crucial to assess whether they will effectively contribute to reduce vulnerability and increase resilien…
Climate change response in Europe
Resilience trade-offs
The concept of urban resilience has so far been related mainly to climate change adaptation and disaster management perspectives. Here we aim to broaden the discussion by showing how the framework of urban resilience should be related to wider sustainability challenges, including i) climate change and natural hazard threats, ii) unsustainable urban metabolism patterns and iii) increasing social inequalities in cities. Using three case studies (fl…
Use of fuzzy cognitive maps to study urban resilience and transformation
Emergence of new knowledge for climate change adaptation
Decision-making for climate change adaptation requires an integrated and cross-sectoral approach to adequately capture the complexity of interconnected systems. More meaningful decisions can be taken in an arena where different agents provide knowledge of specific domains. This paper uses a semi-quantitative method based on cognitive mapping to demonstrate how new knowledge emerges when combining knowledge from diverse agents. For the case of hea…
A cross-scale worldwide analysis of coastal adaptation planning
The Paris Agreement requires measurement of the progress made on adaptation. Tracking the progress made by governments through analysis of policies provides insight into the goals and means to achieve adaptation targets. Here we show the current state-of-the-art in public adaptation planning affecting 136 of the largest coastal port urban agglomerations, covering 68 countries. We identify 226 adaptation policies: 88 at national level, 57 at regio…
Para qué impactos climáticos se preparan las ciudades españolas
Las ciudades tienen un papel importante en la identificación de impactos climáticos sobre la población, la urbanización y las infraestructuras, y en la toma de decisiones relativas a cómo, cuánto y cuándo debemos adaptarnos. Presentamos aquí un análisis de los impactos climáticos identificados en 11 planes de adaptación local al cambio climático actualmente en vigor en las mayores ciudades españolas. Categorizamos estos impactos climáticos en tor…
Transformative Adaptation in Cities
Will climate mitigation ambitions lead to carbon neutrality? An analysis of the local-level plans of 327 cities in the EU
Adaptation planning in large cities is unlikely to be effective
The assessment of public adaptation policies, strategies and plans to evaluate progress, effectiveness and long-term sustainability is challenging. The potential to develop an ex-post evaluation linked to outcomes is limited given the lack of policy implementation globally and the uncertainty related to when and how impacts will happen. Ex-ante evaluations, by contrast, seem more feasible when they focus on policy processes, contents and outputs.…
Subaltern forms of knowledge are required to boost local adaptation
Guiding cities under increased droughts
Climate change is likely to increase droughts. The vulnerability of cities to droughts is increasing worldwide. Policy responses from cities to droughts lack consideration of long-term climatic and socio-economic scenarios, and focus on short-term emergency actions that disregard sustainability in the connected regional and river basin systems. We aim to explore the dynamics of the water-energy-land nexus in urban systems suffering increased clim…
How well do climate adaptation policies align with risk-based approaches? An assessment framework for cities
Many cities around the world are undertaking adaptation planning processes in contexts of considerable uncertainty due to climate risks. However, new evidence suggests that current adaptation policies are failing to fully incorporate risk-related information and knowledge. Understanding how policies account for current and future risks becomes crucial to assess whether they will effectively contribute to reduce vulnerability and increase resilien…
Adaptation to Climate Change in Cities of the Mediterranean Europe
Institutionalisation of urban climate adaptation
Comparative studies of urban adaptation have evaluated the progress, means and scope of adaptation planning. Practice on the ground shows that the local politics of climate adaptation advance through various strategies to align different interests and spheres of action or disrupt mainstream practices, which translates into a wide range of interventions. This paper focuses on understanding the dynamics and tools that enable the institutionalisatio…
A policy content analysis for evaluating urban adaptation justice in İstanbul
Global mapping of urban nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation
Adaptation to climate change in cities of Mediterranean Europe
Cities across Mediterranean Europe face common climatic threats. They are highly vulnerable and very likely to suffer losses and damages due to heat waves, droughts, wildfires, landslides, and extreme coastal events. To this date, however, there is no systematic understanding of how cities in Mediterranean Europe are preparing to adapt to these impacts. To address this question, we analyse local adaptation plans in 73 cities located in 51 regions…
Socio-economic projections in urban climate change adaptation planning
Urban climate change adaptation efforts have often been criticized for exacerbating the inequitable impacts of climate change by failing to address the social, economic, and environmental impacts of adaptation. There is an urgent need to incorporate equity and justice concerns in adaptation planning as well as approaches and tools that enable such integration. However, climate justice scholarship to date has largely focused on theoretical questio…
What is limiting how we imagine climate change adaptation
Imaginaries of adaptation are currently dominated by technocratic, homogenous, top-down approaches that hinder sustainable, just, and effective adaptation worldwide. We have identified three practices that contribute to this problem: (1) an assumption of universality in adaptation; (2) a neglect of pluralistic knowledge systems and values; and (3) an oversimplification of adaptation processes. These three practices have been found to lead to repr…
Disrupting the imaginaries of urban action to deliver just adaptation
Highlights Urban adaptation relates to how people imagine plausible and desirable urban futures. Adaptation imaginaries refer to collective representations of how society should act and towards which goal in the context of unprecedented climate change impacts. However, the existing narratives of adaptation action tend to entrench actions that may not be beneficial in the long term and may lead to maladaptation and inequities. This is the case, fo…
Measuring the contribution of nature-based solutions beyond climate adaptation in cities
MEL for urban NbS must account for the diversity of co-benefits they may provide. • Current MEL practices for NbS favour ecological over social (justice) benefits. • Good information for use within MEL is defined by local socio-political dynamics. • Effective MEL for NbS needs flexible guidelines that can be contextualised locally. • Bridging the interests and needs of diverse actors is crucial for successful MEL. Measuring the contribution of ur…
Localising the Global Goal on Adaptation through intersectional thinking
Adapting to climate change
Climate change will have a disproportionate and asymmetric impact on cities and urban areas, and some of their most vulnerable residents will be at particular risk. Studies have found that some municipalities have done far more to adapt to it than others, but there has been a general lack of funding, implementation and engagement with marginalised groups to help them prepare. We suggest that the unpredictable and evolving nature of climate impact…
Knowledge diversity for climate change adaptation
As climate-driven extreme weather events continue to intensify, risk mitigation and governance are a critical aspect of urban climate change adaptation. Interdisciplinary knowledge integration is critical in order to account for varied perspectives related to the impacts of extreme weather events on urban systems. Despite advances made to integrate different strands of knowledge through systems-based approaches, few methods exist to contextualize…
Explaining the adaptation gap through consistency in adaptation planning
Climate change (22 works) · Environmental resource management (19 works) · Geography (19 works) · Adaptation (eye (17 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration (15 works) · Economics (14 works) · Environmental planning (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Climate change adaptation (13 works)