Nature-based solutions (NbS) are currently a priority of international institutions (UN and EU) to improve urban resilience to hydro-climatic risks. However, responsible institutions, such as river basin authorities and local governments, while still prioritizing gray infrastructure, often present resistance to these strategies. This paper analyzes this issue in the case of Seville (Spain). We identify historical and recent institutional practices related to the development of gray infrastructure and the experience of citizens’ movements that demand the implementation of green infrastructure and the naturalization of urban space. Based on the theoretical framework of the sustainability transition, the article contributes to the identification of the factors that hinder or trigger the processes of change, drawing from the results of a case with a long tradition in hydro-climatic disaster management. The research has included an in-depth review of risk planning in the city of Seville, semi-structured interviews with 24 social and institutional actors, and participant observation of both urban planning processes and the practices of citizen movements. Our results show that the generation of shared visions clashes, first with conflicting perceptions of the city’s strengths and weaknesses regarding risks; second, with contradictions between institutional discourses and practices, and finally, with the operational limitations of public participation processes.

Until very recently, in the debates on water in the Spanish and European context, the concept of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation (HRWS) evoked foreign realities, typical of Latin American countries or other regions of the global south. However, since the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008, as a result of the consequent emergence of situations of poverty and precariousness, the concern to defend the recognition and implementation of this right became present. The declaration of the HRWS by the United Nations in 2010 (United Nations 2010a,2010b), coinciding with this historical juncture, has promoted processes and debates around its effective implementation at an international, European and Spanish level. The current health crisis and the consequent economic debacle caused by the COVID-19 at the beginning of 2020 have updated the urgency of the debate on the HRWS. In 2015, the plenary session of the European Parliament supported the citizens' initiative Right2Water, which sought to guarantee the right to water for all people and the transposition of the HRWS into the legislation of member states. The current reform process of the Drinking Water Directive (98/83/EC) is justified, among other reasons, by the need to adapt these regulations to the aforementioned commitment to coherence. The Right2Water initiative was transferred to Spain, mainly thanks to the encouragement of the Association of Public Water Supply and Sanitation Operators (Asociación de Operadores Públicos de Abastecimiento y Saneamiento Agua, AEOPAS), within the framework of the statewide Public Water Network (Red Agua Pública, RAP), through the Social Pact for Public Water (Pacto Social por el Agua Pública, PSAP). The effects of the crisis also coincided with privatization processes of water services that, justified by austerity policies, European institutions promoted in the countries most affected by the crisis, despite strong social opposition. In some of these countries, such as Spain, the process of privatization has been especially related to the seek of funding by municipalities in crisis, through the perverse mechanism of the ‘concession fee’, which allows for a rapid injection of money into the municipal treasury in exchange for a decades-long privatization of the service. This process is usually accompanied by increasing rates and greater pressure on users with payment problems. The relations between the causes and consequences of the crisis and privatization, as well as the emergence of situations of water poverty of different types, have led to the present existence of a social movement, with a solid discourse that is committed to defending the human right to water, as well as the model of public management, in our cities. At the same time, the existence of public water management companies, which formally maintain public ownership of the service but practice a mercantile management style (priority of profit and loss accounts, opacity, consideration of users as clients) has led to demands to renew public management models to guarantee compliance with the human right to water in a broad and deep sense, redefined in an antagonistic way: a recognition of access to drinking water and sanitation as a human right rigorously conceived that puts into question the neoliberal logic of managing water services. This is one of the core arguments this article addresses: the HRWS today constitutes the banner of a movement that is articulated around the concept of water as a common good and that is oriented towards the objective of building a collaborative and transparent model of public management. The ownership of water and sanitation services operators (in their different modalities, from strictly public to strictly private formulas) is related to the implementation of the HRWS, which contributes to the reactivation of debates on the need to preserve or recover (‘remunicipalización’) the public character of these services, and with the need to generate legal frameworks that guarantee effective local democratic policies. To this social dimension, committed to the public and democratic dimension, open to new debates on common goods management, another characteristic is added: the human rights movement in Spain has been in tune from its beginnings in discourse and organizational structure with socio-eco-integrating perspectives of natural resources, aquatic ecosystems management, which is at the foundation of the possibility of implementing the human right to water. This is a relevant and somewhat distinctive quality of the Spanish experience, which contrasts with the unfortunate, although historically explainable, disagreements and conflicts that frequently characterize the social and environmental perspectives in the movements in defense of water. In addition to the above, this article presents a new approach to the typology of water poverties. Until recently, the efforts that have been carried out in the implementation of the HRWS have been focused especially on accessibility, condemning and trying to alleviate the deficits in supply and sanitation coverage in the Global South. In contrast, its recent reception in European countries has focused especially on affordability (prohibition of cuts, guarantee of a vital minimum, social rates) and on implications for governance (transparency, accountability) and the management model (public versus private). However, throughout this research it has been found that accessibility remains a significant problem in certain European regions, especially related to the existence of marginal settlements, slums, homelessness, temporary immigrant workers in rural areas, etc. The problem of HRWS is thus situated in the broader context of access to housing and dignified living conditions, and is related to the marginalization and exclusion of groups or social sectors, due to various factors, generally combined, of economic,...

La acción climática se ha consolidado en las ciudades a través de nuevas iniciativas sociales y estrategias institucionales. Este artículo pretende contribuir a entender la implicación social en la acción y gobernanza climática urbana a través de un análisis comparativo en dos ciudades españolas (Barcelona y Sevilla) guiado por tres preguntas de investigación: 1) ¿Qué espacios de colaboración con la administración y/o con otras entidades para la acción y la gobernanza climática urbana se han generado?; 2) ¿Qué motivaciones y expectativas tienen las entidades sociales para involucrarse en estos espacios?; y 3) ¿En qué medida las entidades activas en la acción climática colaboran (o no) con la administración para la gobernanza climática, y qué límites perciben? Esta investigación combina una revisión de políticas e iniciativas sociales frente al cambio climático, con entrevistas a entidades clave en la acción climática urbana, para mostrar una expansión y diferenciación de los espacios de colaboración con la administración y con otras entidades para la acción y gobernanza climática en ambas ciudades; y una diversidad de motivaciones para implicarse (o no) en ellos. Entender mejor los límites y oportunidades de las nuevas alianzas público-cívicas es clave para construir respuestas arraigadas y transformadoras frente la emergencia climática.

The paper presents the works to elaborate the "Action Guidelines for Water Management" of the Quinta de Torre Arias Master Plan, a productive and recreational property recovered for public use by the City Council of Madrid (Spain). The aim is to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the Quinta, of which water is a key element, through a methodology of eco-adaptive management of water resources and water heritage. This work is an original example of improving urban resilience to hydro-climatic risks through the creative adaptation of water heritage infrastructures to the new challenges of the urban water cycle. The proposal, combining the logic of traditional systems with innovative alternatives, offers a great potential for the development of water-sensitive cities, which is explored in this paper.