Gernika-Lumo, a municipality of approximately 17,000 inhabitants in the Basque Country located within the Urdaibai UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, is a Replication City in ClimaGen. This first City Report, covering the project’s first eighteen months, documents the establishment of the Gernika ClimaLab and the development of its portfolio of greening measures along the Urbieta–Rentería river corridor, an area bordering the Oka river. The city’s participation builds directly on its Integrated Plan for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (PIMACC, 2023) and connects to the regional Urban Klima 2050 programme, the Basque KLIMA 2050 Strategy, and national and EU adaptation policy frameworks.
The Gernika ClimaLab, jointly hosted by the City Council, GAIA and Eskilara, has built a quintuple-helix governance ecosystem bringing together public authorities, civil society, education, industry, and nature and biodiversity actors. Structured co-design processes have been conducted for the city greening portfolio and are underway for the Positive Energy District (PED). An October 2025 Study Visit, and active use of the cross-cutting ClimaGames portfolio complement this engagement work. A Project Maturity Level assessment situates the portfolio at early-stage investment readiness, with priority financing gaps identified for the next phase.
The ClimaGreens portfolio comprises five planned renaturing measures together with two innovation-driven interventions: the BioDome Climate Shelter, a bio-material climate refuge pilot, and the PED. All measures are currently at planning, feasibility or concept-development stage, targeting an approximately 29% increase in qualifying green space against a 5,060 m² baseline.
A Gernika Local Impact Model, combining ClimaGen’s monitoring approach with the New European Bauhaus-inspired Sleeping Beauty framework and the city’s existing PIMACC indicator system, structures twelve core indicators across the natural and built environment, co-creation and governance, and socio-economic and cultural domains, supporting Gernika’s contribution to ClimaGen’s project-wide targets of +25% restored green space and +20% resident satisfaction.
The report also covers Gernika’s coordination across institutional levels: local, regional (Udalsarea 21, Urban Klima 2050) and European (the EU Adaptation and Climate-Neutral Cities Missions), and how exchanges with sister projects inform its governance and sustainability work. It closes candidly on early challenges such as limited municipal capacity, permitting and land-governance complexity, a complex language context, and small-municipality replication constraints. On the lessons carried forward: the value of in-person exchange, pre-existing policy anchoring, and cultural formats for unlocking participation.
Download: