• Young Climathon: Young Climathon is a local climate action initiative that has been implemented in more than 200 cities this year, aiming to generate a global community movement that places young students at the heart of the city's transformation towards climate neutrality.  The goal of this program is to empower young people to lead this change by becoming changemakers in their local ecosystem.

• VegetART-ing Schools - Cross-KIC New European Bauhaus: This project aimed to enhance citizen participation through the collaborative ideation and design of artistic prototypes of nature-based solutions to achieve climate resilience. It is founded upon a rich social ecosystem and pilot initiative, Cyborg Garden. Through a collaboration between the Madrid City Council, the Mutant Institute of Alternative Narratives (IMNA), Plataforma Motor Nave Boetticher (PNB), and the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and within the Madrid Deep Demonstration portfolio, the project Cyborg Garden has sought to co-design NBS by using an innovative methodological approach that unites art, science, and society.

• Madrid Compensa Ecosystem Services: Over the past year (2021), we have been designing, in close collaboration with Dark Matter Labs, the City Council of Madrid, and UPM, the way to widen the scope of Madrid Compensa to begin to assess and quantify the contribution of urban green areas, beyond their function as a carbon sink, and start to recognize the multiple environmental, social and economic co-benefits  which trees contribute to the city, as a key step to expanding the idea of value of urban natural assets. We began to collaborate with ECOGESFOR,(a research group, based at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), to develop a tool and methodology to  to calculate the ecosystem services generated by planting projects associated with the Madrid Compensa Program.  The calculated ecosystem services for each reforestation project will be included in a certification that Madrid City Council will give participants in recognition of their contribution. The project has taken shape with the inputs for Madrid’s specific tree/shrub species and growing conditions. The objective has been to tailor the tool to specific needs and, at the same, create a methodological frame that can be easily extrapolated to other territories.         

• People-Driven: Adapting cities for tomorrow (LIFE-PACT): LIFE PACT's overarching objective is to develop and test an integrated approach to urban climate change adaptation (CCA) that draws on the efforts of multiple stakeholders, including local government, citizens, universities, and private actors, to more effectively deploy NBS. Specifically, the aims of PACT are to: 1) 1.Deploy NBS across several pilot and replication sites, 2) Develop and test a replicable method for engaging citizens in the deployment of NBS; and, 3) Develop and test a replicable method for engaging local stakeholders in the deployment of NBS.

• Art and Science project: Cyborg Garden: The Cyborg Garden is a collaborative process where a group of artists develops, together with a team of technicians and experts from different disciplines, a series of creation processes to test strategies for adapting to climate change, which increase the resilience of public space and that make Matadero- Madrid a desirable place.  Matadero is located at the heart of an urban ‘heat island’: a place where heat accumulates as a consequence of its location and its physical configuration. The proposal is to implement strategies to mitigate the “heat island effect” and to rethink the role of the public space in relation to climate change. During this process, Matadero Madrid become a laboratory for testing nature-based solutions that will culminate in a series of replicable prototypes capable of raising the resilience of this public space in Madrid.

• Ecologia a pie de Barrio - Young Innovator: The project's main objective consists of developing an analytical and reflective vision on the environmental situation of the immediate surroundings of the young people/ participants, and designing Nature-Based Solutions which respond to the previously identified environmental challenges. Promote scientific culture from experimentation in the classroom and outside of it; Connect with entities and initiatives in their surroundings with which to work for the environmental improvement of their neighborhoods; Develop digital and scientific skills, through the development of sensors made by young people themselves; Encourage creativity and cooperation in the classroom as a way to address environmental challenges; Encourage their empowerment and initiative for the improvement of their neighborhood; Testing with Nature-Based Solutions, as a way to improve the environmental quality of its closest surroundings.  

• The Metropolitan Forest : The intent behind this strategic experiment is to discover options for the design and development of interconnected urban interventions which employ the combination of Nature-Based Solutions and Health as vectors for urban planning, decarbonization and climate adaptation in the City of Madrid, exploring policy, finance, governance, engagement, and partnership options for accelerating multiple-benefit nature-based solutions at scale. It aims to establish a collaborative working model consisting of multiple actors across public sector policy silos, and across private and civic sectors.

Through 2021 we have undertaken these activities combining multiple  leverage  points  to explore and test  how  to  deepen  systemic  impact. Madrid has well-developed aspirations in the domain of nature-based solutions, including the Metropolitan Forest, and several linked projects

• New Narratives to explore the Metropolitan Forest through a Travelling Exhibition: The exhibition on the Metropolitan Forest began its journey through the districts of Madrid with the aim of bringing this great city project closer to all inhabitants.The exhibition reproduces the ring of the Metropolitan Forest, the great green infrastructure of 75 km that will border Madrid. On a large table, built with the remains of oak and pine recovered from the storm Filomena, the winning projects and finalists of the ideas contest wereseen. It was  surrounded by a vertical garden representing the birth process of a forest - from ideas to reality.