Resilient Salvador Challenge

Vista panorámica de la Bahía de Todos los Santos y el Mirador Lacerda. Salvador de Bahía, Brasil.

The city of Salvador, Brazil, has 2.8 million inhabitants, of which 50.8% are afro-descendants. It makes it the city with the highest number of afro-descendants outside the African Continent.

In 2018, Salvador held a participatory process to build its Resilience Strategy. As a result, the city identified the following impacts (disruptive events that occur at a certain time such as heat waves) and chronic stresses (factors that generate pressure and weaken the city cyclically such as social inequality):

As a result, the Resilience Strategy of Salvador is made up of 5 axes:

1. Culture and multiple identities

2. Healthy and involved community

3. Diversified and inclusive economy

4. Informed city and innovative governance

5. Sustainable urban transformation

Resilient Salvador vision is to consolidate itself as a city recognized for its rich human and cultural heritage, open to the sea and the world. Capital of multiple identities, creativity and innovation, where sustainable and technological development promotes resilience, inclusion and integration of people.

In 2019 the City of Salvador, Resilient Cities Network, Avina Foundation and IDB-LAB, in alliance with WTT – World-Transforming Technologies, and Social Park – Entrepreneurship and Social Development, opened the call “Resilient Salvador”.

The Challenge is part of the Regional Initiative of Resilient Cities, that aims to improve urban resilience in Latin America and the Caribbean with the participation of the private sector in the Resilience Strategy of Salvador.

The Challenge aims to foster pilot projects or technological and sustainable initiatives that promotes triple impact solutions, linked to the circular economy and gender equity in the city, and with the potential to generate income.

The circular economy approach was selected as a result of a dialogue process with the private sector in 2018. The process allowed the identification of the city’s assets and potentials, and gastronomy and culture were identified as the most important. The private sector identified waste management as one of the main challenges for the city, as well as social inequity.

The 3 main topics of the challenge were:

1) Food chain: Improve access to food, local production, logistics chain, energy consumption, etc.

2) Waste: Encourage reuse, energy production, improve infrastructure / recycling processes, etc.

3) Water and sewage treatment: reuse and treatment of sewage and industrial waters, recovery of water ecosystems, beach cleaning, etc.