Focus Group with Workers in Zaragoza, Spain

This case study is part of the Spanish pilot case study within the AGORA project. AGORA promotes societal transformation to empower local communities to address the climate crisis and aims to achieve this through a multidisciplinary, integrated approach and four pilot studies in Europe.

AGORA is a HORIZON Europe project started in January 2023. It supports the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change.

Summary

This focus group targeted working individuals to gather their perspectives and co-create solutions for climate adaptation. Working individuals were chosen as the target audience for this focus group because of the importance of integrating their views and experiences into climate adaptation strategies. Participants from this session highlighted the importance of integrating adaptation plans and different perspectives into climate governance and the necessity of effective communication to engage diverse groups.

Introduction

On June 17th, 2024 the AGORA project partner, ibercivis, conducted a focus group in its Spanish pilot of Zaragoza, Spain. This event took place at the LAAAB (Laboratorio Aragón Gobierno Abierto) and is part of a series of focus groups in the Spanish pilot. Six participants from a diverse range of working backgrounds came together to explore climate change impacts and co-create adaptation strategies. This session was organized into three activities: sharing personal experiences, co-creating soft adaptation solutions, and co-evaluating engagement methods. Once the participants arrived, there was a brief introduction and a presentation on climate adaptation that included a discussion on heat waves.

Methodology

First Activity

Participants began the session by sharing their personal experiences with climate change and extreme heat temperatures. Many of the participants noted a lack of clear protocols and eco-anxiety related to climate change.

Second Activity

The second activity involved co-creating soft climate adaptation solutions. In this activity, participants reflected individually and created two ideas for climate adaptation. Then the participants shared their ideas with the group and discussed the merits, implications, and potential for each idea. The ideas identified included adapting work environments and housing to mitigate against extreme temperatures, building more green areas around schools and playgrounds, developing more resilient cities, and creating climate shelters. Furthermore, participants stressed the need for reducing emissions and creating more ethical dialogue and engagement within the city of Zaragoza. The participants also noted that they felt that the bureaucracy is very slow to adapt and that neighbourhood associations should be involved in the decision-making process.

Third Activity

In this activity, participants evaluated engagement methods and identified the ones they felt were most effective. This started with participants prioritizing engagement issues. These included:

• Creating constructive and positive language.
• Gaining social participation.
• Re-naturalization.
• Transmitting messages through the generation gap.
• Identifying the needs of various groups.
• Replicating good practices.
• Making adaptation spaces known.

From this, participants then brainstormed engagement techniques to tackle these issues. Some of the methods included community awareness campaigns, peer support, advisory councils, public talks, mobile training and capacity-building workshops, and citizen learning circles and mentoring programs. Participants suggested that these engagement methods customize their content for their audience’s interests and concerns and use positive messaging. They also recommended using humour and entertainment such as cultural arts, music festivals, etc.

Conclusion

This focus group session displayed different ways to engage and create climate adaptation solutions. However, the participants showed skepticism over the implementation of adaptation strategies and engagement initiatives due to past failures. This highlights the importance of reassuring citizens and establishing trust between them and decision-makers.