On 28 January 2026, more than 20 stakeholders gathered in the Lèze valley, France, for the second SpongeLab workshop. The workshop was jointly organised with the Horizon Europe project SpongeWorks, which is also active in the Lèze basin.
While SpongeWorks addresses the entire Lèze basin, SpongeScapes focuses its SpongeLab process on one sub-basin: the Rosé. This workshop created an opportunity to work across both geographical scales.
Participants were representatives from local and regional authorities, active on agriculture, water and/or biodiversity, farmers and project partners – including SMIVAL as host, OiEau, and Leibniz University Hannover.
Working at two territorial levels
Participants were divided into four groups to develop scenarios for 2050: three groups worked at the scale of the entire Lèze basin, and one group focused specifically on the Rosé sub-basin - one of the two SpongeLabs of the SpongeScapes project, alongside the Dutch SpongeLab in Aa-dal Noord.
Building on the first workshop held in January 2025, this second session marked a key step in co-designing a long-term sponge strategy for the Rosé sub-basin.
Shaping a collective sponge future with Geodesign
Using a guidebook developed to support the Geodesign spatial planning process, participants reviewed and refined a proposed 2050 vision for the Rosé. They translated this vision into a collective “Sponge Future” map, identifying where sponge measures could be implemented to strengthen climate resilience.
Selecting measures to enhance landscape resilience
Through structured dialogue and collective mapping, participants refined priority areas and selected sponge measures to address floods, droughts and soil erosion at landscape scale.
The results will be analysed with the Geodesign impact assessment tool to understand their effects on sponge functioning, biodiversity, and landscape aesthetics. Findings will be shared in an upcoming online session to support the Rosé sub-basin sponge strategy and provide local insights for SpongeWorks at the broader Lèze basin scale.
Learn more about the Lèze case study on the dedicated page.