Medellín's Comuna 8 Climate Plan Expands to All 21 Comunas
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Comuna 8 residents and partner organizations formally launched the Local Agreement for Inclusive Climate Action in August 2023 after three years of development, comprising 8 measures that include rainwater management, hillside reforestation, eco-gardens, and agroforestry systems.
- Community leader Róbinson Velásquez Cartagena designed and built a rooftop rainwater harvesting system in the Golondrinas neighbourhood that stores runoff for his washing machine and toilet, aiming to reduce the street flooding that triggers landslides.
- Nancy Elena Quiros Correa oversees a 9-by-3-metre community tree nursery set up last year in the El Pacifico neighbourhood to absorb rainwater, prevent rockfalls, and increase biodiversity on the unstable slopes.
- DAGRD, the Comuna 8 housing and habitat committee, and Heriot-Watt University co-developed the plan, which began as a disaster-management scheme before the community expanded it to cover climate adaptation.
- DAGRD technical lead Juan David Moreno said the work in Comuna 8 was built as a pilot for the city's other 20 comunas, with terrain and hazard assessments tailored to each community's needs.
- The 150,000-person informal settlement remains acutely vulnerable — a 1987 landslide in the area killed 500 people, and Quiros Correa's wall was twice collapsed by falling rocks around 2011.
- Both Quiros Correa and Moreno flagged implementation as the biggest remaining hurdle, with Quiros Correa saying progress required "fighting and negotiating" with local government and Velásquez Cartagena urging the municipality to fund the proposals.
Why it matters: The Comuna 8 plan becomes Medellín's template for climate adaptation across all 21 comunas serving 4 million residents, but the test is whether the municipality funds and executes it. DAGRD's Moreno names cross-departmental implementation as the biggest challenge, and resident Quiros Correa says every gain came through "fighting and negotiating" — making grassroots pressure, not the plan itself, the real lever for the 150,000 residents exposed to landslides and floods.
Ask SkimNews
