Community social characterization
The pilot project in Caceres Municipality it is been design including in a participatory approach the organic waste producers as: restaurants, scholar cantines, homesteads, and local composters as: families in 3 gardens, the social food gardeners in public plots, and some small scale farmer in less than 10 km from the city. The main partner is Caceres Municipality, and the Popular University of Caceres.
Governance in the pilot case
Provincial Council of Cáceres (Region Level), Municipality of Cáceres, Mas Medio (Waste Management Consortium) and Municipalities of less than 2.000 inhabitants.
Motivation of the pilot
Spanish legislation obligate to municipalities with less than 5000 inhab to recolte and treat organic matter separately in 2024. With this pilot case we had proposed to Caceres Provincial Government and its Public Company MAS MEDIO to design the more community and the more circular and ecological efficiente solution as a pilot project to assess and furthermore incorporate to their main provincial organic solution according with NbS and indicators.
Local governance profile
>Caceres Municipality
>There will be a Eco-System of Composting Experiences operating at the region, some of them will be manage by the Municipal Councils and some others by a network of Associations and NGOs that are being training by Economías
>BioRegionales.
Target group
Promote governance in decision-making between citizens, companies and municipalities to decide and co-govern the most interesting environmental, economic and social solutions to treat bio-waste.
Existing NBS applications and initiatives
Caceres Municipality has a social communal garden with 20 users, and enhancing and enlarging to other three organic gardens and 50 users and vegetable small entrepreneurship. Composting biowaste as organic fertilizer is a NbS to increase organic matter in soil, micro biodiversity, carbon mitigation and sequestration.
Small scale NBS testing
SIMBIO is a program to design the scope of biowaste generation and treatment, and that allows selecting solutions that are less costly climatically and more recirculating resources.
Leverage resources for NBS
Organic local waste as organic local fertilizer, local food vegetable production and seasonal and organic consumption to close more efficiently the organic flow in Territorial Food Systems.
Challenges raised during the preparatory meetings
From february to June 2023 the project team of EBR has had different meeting with the technical services of Caceres Municipality and Caceres Province in order to explain the assessment to their administration for designing in a participatory way, with indicators of NbS the best community and natural based solution. During may has been the local, provincial and regional elections and the decision makers has renounced or change for or the elected responsables of the areas, so that we expect the inauguration for design further, especially with the province ir order to chose the territory and communities to practice
Environmental Challenges
Fulled landfilled and obligation of biowaste collection and treatment. Reduction of carbon emissions and increase of carbon sequestration in local agricultural soils, increasing soil biodiversity and social consciousness and neighbourhood community engagement. The high requirements from the regional Environmental Assessment Services, that demand the same for huge composting low quality plants, as for small scale farming. It is necessary to assess, confirm and demonstrate the enhancement of the environmental impact from small scale and social initiatives to large scale and big companies. In order to assess the differences it is necessary to consider: soil remotion, reduce GH emissions on transport, reduce GH emissions on treatment, etc.
Who owns the land?
There will be solutions in public municipal land of the Caceres Municipality, social producing vegetable gardens, and child gardens. We have contact with some farmers interested in composting bio urban waste and producing their own fertilizer in private agriculture plots.
Social Challenges
The quality of the organic waste collection is critical to provide for a small scale farming focused on urban close food systems. The balance between local government and social and neighbourhood participation is a critical aspect from closing those circular Territorial Food Systems.
Related projects to create synergies
In october 2024 the Network of decentralised composting (Composta en Red) accepted in their 2022 assembly realize the annual seminar in Caceres , trying to involved some local council or NGO in their partnership, EBR is part of this national association from 2018 as as active board partner.
Economic Challenges
Not increase taxes and creating more natural based solution jobs on organic agriculture with the biowastes. Local farming or gardening composting treatment needs to be cheaper in order to enlarge the model, if compared with large scale (low NbS). It is necessary to compete on prices (and social engagement) compared with large companies and centralising solutions.
Possible local partners, associations, initiatives and champions to be engaged
Parent school associations, companies of conventional waste treatment, restaurant and cantines. Farmers and eventually farmers cooperatives or associations.