Cuenca: Participatory Construction of the Cuenca Climate Action Plan 2025–2035

The participatory development of the Cuenca Climate Action Plan 2025–2035 consisted of a process led by the Municipal Decentralized Autonomous Government of Cuenca to involve diverse territorial actors in defining actions to address climate change. The initiative aimed to strengthen shared social responsibility in local climate planning and ensure that public policies incorporate the perspectives, knowledge, and proposals of citizens.

The process was carried out through a participatory methodology that included workshops, working groups, and dialogue spaces with representatives from social organizations, academia, the productive sector, and public institutions. These meetings made it possible to identify the main climate challenges facing the territory and to generate proposals focused on greenhouse gas emission mitigation, climate change adaptation, and the protection of the canton’s strategic ecosystems.

One of the main outcomes was the effective integration of citizen contributions into the technical formulation of the plan. The proposals collected were systematized and analyzed by the municipal technical team, allowing several of them to be incorporated into the strategic lines and actions that will guide the city’s climate management over the next decade.

Beyond enriching the content of the plan, the process also helped raise public awareness about the impacts of climate change and strengthened the municipality’s institutional capacity to promote participatory processes in public policy design. This experience demonstrates that citizen participation can play a key role in building local responses to climate change and in strengthening more participatory and sustainable climate governance.

More information:
https://www.cuenca.gob.ec/
https://www.oidp.net/docs/repo/doc1935.pdf