Dropping long lectures – will solve the municipalities' climate crisis in three days

Want to find solutions. Grete Hovelsrud at Nordland Research Institute is central when Klimathon 2026 takes place in Bodø in the fall of 2026. The experienced researcher hopes that the mix of business, bureaucrats and Researchers Together we will find new solutions to ensure area neutrality, contribute to climate adaptation and reduce emissions.

Municipalities are under pressure from all sides: They must build housing, but protect nature. Cut emissions, but ensure growth. During the 2026 Climatethon in Bodø, Researchers gather and lead a workshop where collaboration will be carried out to arrive at very specific solutions.

Over the course of three days, Researchers , land planners, business actors and administration develop concrete solutions to challenges related to land use, climate adaptation and emission reduction.

Municipalities are facing increasing demands when planning their future communities. While facilitating housing and business development, nature must be preserved, emissions reduced, and society adapted to a changing climate.

During the 2026 Climatethon in Bodø, Researchers , municipalities, county authorities, the State Administrator and the business community to explore how these considerations can be seen in context.

– We want to bring together people who usually see these challenges from different perspectives. When they work together on specific issues, solutions often arise that none of them would have found alone, says research leader Grete K. Hovelsrud at Nordland Research Institute .

Klimathon 2026 will take place from October 6th at 11:30 AM to October 8th at 1:00 PM at the Svømmehallen stage in Bodø.

Here is where you can register: https://nettskjema.no/a/629638

Should work, not just listen

Klimathon is based on the hackathon method, where participants work intensively on specific challenges in interdisciplinary groups.

Instead of long lectures, participants will discuss their own experiences and develop proposals for solutions to given group tasks that municipalities and others can take forward.

“This is not a seminar where you sit and listen to presentations. Participants will work together and use their own experience to develop practical and strategic solutions,” says Hovelsrud.

This working method has been used at five previous Klimathon events in Norway, and experience shows that it both builds networks and provides new perspectives on complex climate challenges.

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Connecting three major challenges

This year's theme is the connection between

• Area neutrality: How to reuse "grey areas" instead of building in untouched nature?

• Climate adaptation: How to prepare municipalities against extreme weather?

• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions : How to cut emissions through land use?

A key question is how municipalities can use already developed or degraded areas, so-called grey areas, rather than building up new nature.

– If we first develop an area, how can we also make the area better equipped against climate change? Can we restore bogs, manage stormwater or create other benefits at the same time? These are the kinds of connections we want to explore, says Hovelsrud.

She points out that this is a field where both research and practical planning are still in the initial phase, but which has been brought to light through, among other things, a major review of nature loss conducted by NRK. It emerged that 44,000 nature interventions had been made in Norway in five years.

NRK reveals: 44,000 interventions in Norwegian nature in five years – Documentary

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Hope the participants go home with new tools

The goal is for participants in Klimathon to not only gain new ideas, but also concrete methods they can use when they return to their own municipalities and businesses.

– We hope that the participants will gain both new solutions and a new way of thinking. If a spatial planner or a small municipality goes home with tools and ideas they can use next week, then we have succeeded, says Hovelsrud.

Climatethon is organized in collaboration between Nordland Research Institute , Bodø Municipality, Nordland County Municipality, the State Administrator of Nordland, NORCE, Village Green, Vestlandsforsking, and Noradapt Center for Sustainable Climate Adaptation.

The event is funded by Noradapt, the Research Council of Norway and the Norwegian Environment Agency.

If you work with land or climate and environment in administration, are a business actor, researcher or just interested, you can register for Klimathon Bodø.

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