COmmunity Living Lab
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development recognized the importance of access to basic services, in a world where everyone has an opportunity to live a life in dignity, while preserving our planet. Yet, billions of people live today without access to basic services like electricity, clean cooking fuels, safe water, or education. What does it exactly mean? How are the living conditions in rural marginalized communities?
Together with our partner HEDERA, we want to overcome barriers to sustainable development through transparent and insightful indicators to assess, monitor, report and share!
Communities like Pueblo Viejo struggle daily due to the lack of employment, cultural and territorial limitations that impede them to thrive within their ecosystems. We propose a collaborative mechanism based on living laboratories. With the provided tools, we identify their needs and measure real social and environmental impacts. Our solution can be applied globally to ensure sustainable, resilient communities.
The community we work with displays multidimensional challenges, likely to pose unsuspected risks in the future. Characterized by a fragile ecosystem, Pueblo Viejo and vast communities worldwide lack reliable water and energy access, negatively influencing economic opportunities. Besides, past colonialism and conflicts resulted in collective psychological trauma in the area. Due to systematic oppression, communities like ours are still marginalized and left behind. Financial aid is transferred but does necessarily contribute to improving their living standards.
Our solution entails a bottom-up process of data collection because the best source to collect information are the people themselves. This process is continuous rather than static and integrates the whole landscape of existing actors to create collaborative spaces. We understand one size does not fit all, this solution is context-adaptable and can be used to assess the needs of vulnerable communities worldwide.
Our solution entails a collaborative model to build a sustainable and resilient learning environment in Pueblo Viejo. It is inspired by the research approach of living laboratories that combines knowledge and innovation to address societal needs as a response to current challenges*.
COmmunity living labs are:
Multidimensional: re- identification of the local territory based on economic, ecologic, societal and cultural aspects (Data collection using HEDERA)
Educational: important subjects work parallelly to the needs of the whole environment (adaptation to educational curriculums, workshops)
Innovative learning mechanisms through continuous capacity building and training (on-site with local schools and teachers, digitally with HEDERA).
Inclusive and diverse: all individuals and parties are welcome! Some of them include the municipality of Pueblo Viejo, public entities, NGOs, private institutions and companies, civil initiatives, academia and research institutes.
Participative: facilitation of dialogue and knowledge exchange between stakeholders (Open-discussions in facilitated spaces, meetings, conferences)
Solution-oriented: to tackle current barriers
Empowering: new opportunities, enhances local initiatives
Other tools: blogs, podcasts, journal articles, open-access literature repository
*Schneidewind et al., (2018). Structure matters :real-world laboratories as a new type of large-scale research infrastructure: a framework inspired by Giddens' structuration theory. Gaia-ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 27, 12-17.
Target population
Pueblo Viejo in the department of Magdalena is one of the municipalities with the highest poverty rates in Colombia. It has about 33,000 inhabitants, most of whom live from traditional fishing, arts and crafts and informal trade. The municipality, along with the districts of Tasajera, Isla del Rosario, Palmira and Bocas de Cataca, lack basic services such as drinkable water, electricity, sewage systems, and proper waste management, causing wastewater and trash to be dumped into the Grand Marsh of Santa Marta. This deteriorates the ecosystem characterized by mangroves and affects fishing activities, on which the majority of inhabitants depend. To it, the lack of opportunities for income generation and unemployment affect the quality of life of the families in this municipality.
Besides poor infrastructure and fragile ecosystems, issues like social exclusion in decision-making, malnutrition, low educational levels and family violence were indicated by previous studies. Being one of the first towns to be colonized in Colombia, communities faced civil unrest, battles and even massacres, yet hard-working and perseverance remains in the people. Our solution integrates social and cultural dimensions to explore the extent of these impacts on their environment to identify priorities to focus on.
Our partner organization - HEDERA Sustainable Solutions
Understanding the needs of the population, beyond national statistics or studies focusing on population samples, is crucial to achieving sustainable development without leaving anyone behind. Marginalized communities are the most vulnerable to be left behind, even though the inclusion of all communities has been proclaimed as one of the main principles in the Agenda 2030. Despite the growing awareness of sustainable development topics, the monitoring of progress at the household level remains a major challenge for the research, public, and private (investors, NGOs, financial institutions, and small and medium enterprises) sectors. To overcome the challenges in Pueblo Viejo, HEDERA provides the tools to develop our solution.
Needs Assessment: Rejuvenating Pueblo Viejo, Colombia
Rejuvenating Pueblo Viejo is an initiative of the University of Magdalena Chair of Sustainability started in 2019 in which students develop skills in sustainability and innovation. They focus on social, economic, and environmental fields. Since their involvement, they have already interacted with the community and committed to this project. The engagement of the community is taken into account by working closely with various stakeholders of the community. One of the results include environmental education initiatives on waste disposal and mangrove conservation that are promoted among the youth.
Co-developing solutions to improve access to electricity
This follow-up project of six months (April-September) takes place within the framework of the ASA Program implemented on behalf of the Ministry for Economic and Development (BMZ). Together with HEDERA, the Technical University Berlin, Impact-R, the Institute of Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS),this project has been supported by an international and interdisciplinary team to further assess the needs of Pueblo Viejo. By aiming multiple milestones to establish a way out of energy poverty, this project phase will evaluate indicators such as energy use patterns, sociodemographic, productive activities, and energy justice.
To socialize this project goals, an online discussion with several community members active in local NGOs, cultural spaces, local administration and science was organized. They told us what their perspectives are, what the problems are. Therefore, we gathered their perspectives to build COmmunity living labs: to co-create solutions with Pueblo Viejo. It consists of a methodology of data collection, long-term monitoring and training with the advantage that it can be adapted to the global pandemic.
Using HEDERA's tools, one energy access survey at the household level will be conducted with local school students after previous training on the topic. Our Team in Colombia will proceed by reaching approximately 400 households, both in the center and the periphery of the municipality. A second survey on sociocultural aspects with school teachers aims to collect their ideas for the development of our solution. By facilitating open spaces of dialogue, our solution will improve local cooperation and ensure stakeholder engagement.
- Aggregate local projects to enable access to financial capital for ecosystem services such as natural hazard mitigation, water quality, and carbon storage.
COmmunity living lab acts as a knowledge multiplier by integrating existing initiatives to raise awareness of community needs and highlight the importance of the biodiverse ecosystem.
The fishermen confirmed that their quality of life declined further during the COVID-19 pandemic and are very enthusiastic to cooperate with us. Building on positive experiences of community members with our preliminary work,
Pueblo Viejo agrees our solution will improve working conditions
while contributing to the conservation of the marsh, and to the
responsible management of solid waste. In turn, this will promote and improve income, climate regulation and food provision.
- Pilot: An organization deploying a tested product, service, or business model in at least one community.
Communities like Pueblo Viejo, who live in rich but vulnerable ecosystems, need prosper solutions entailing a shared vision of their whole territory with strengthened cooperation and coexistence for a better tomorrow. Current projects focused on education, infrastructure, fishery, tourism, and commerce should be supported, efficiently managed and sustained to avoid this "space of abandonment" perceived by local populations. We aim to provide a system of negotiating through dialogue, empowerment and increased capability with the facilitated tools provided by HEDERA. Our solution expects this year to reach about 1000 people, up to the entire community in the future.
By giving Pueblo Viejo the space of a living laboratory to understand beliefs, and experiences, we foresee to drive collective action and partnership. The development of community-driven models like ours pinpoints scalable solutions to ensure an inclusive, sustainable future.




