Toolkit for managing international river corridors
Toolkit for managing international river corridors
The SEE River project will soon present the lessons learned from its efforts to find practical ways to introduce integrative management in six river corridors in the Danube and Balkan regions.
Water use among different users creates conflicts on the – still very intact - Vjosa River. The competing uses include drinking water supply, agriculture, energy production, wastewater discharge, among others. © Zinke
Testing an innovative river development tool is difficult enough. But testing that tool with 26 organisations from 12 countries who will work in parallel on six different rivers in South East Europe is ambitious to say the least, but will also have the potential to achieve impressive results. This was the reason the Sustainable Integrated Management of International River Corridors in South East Europe Countries project (SEE River) was ranked top in the SEE Transnational Cooperation Programme’s call for proposals in 2012. The results of the testing will be ready for publication in late October 2014 at a final event integrated with the 6th European River Restoration Conference to be held in Vienna.
The project originated at the International Drava Symposium held in Maribor, Slovenia, in September 2008. At the end of that symposium, the Drava River Vision Declaration was signed by the Heads of Delegations of the four riparian states to the ICPDR (Austria, Slovenia, Hungary and Croatia) and a high Italian representative. Over 130 symposium participants, including 14 current SEE River project partners and observers, agreed on future priorities and a common vision for integrative management of the Drava River (see Danube Watch 3–4 2008).
Hand in hand for six rivers. Some key actors from the symposium are also initiators of the complementary, five-country Trans-Boundary Biosphere Reserve Mura-Drava-Danube (TBR MDD), supported by UNESCO. But through the partner network, it was clear there was a need for similar initiatives on other international rivers in South East Europe, namely the Soča (Slovenia and Italy), the Bodrog (Ukraine, Slovakia and Hungary), the Prut (Ukraine, Romania and Moldova), the Neretva (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia) and the Vjosa (Greece and Albania). The extended partnership, including non-Drava countries, agreed that the project should jointly develop a SEE River Toolkit as the best practice methodology for integrative management of international river corridors. The project began in October 2012 with a budget of €2.1 million.
The project partnership includes national and provincial expert institutions from the environment and water management sectors as well as several observing ministries and international organisations, including the ICPDR. The project is led by the Institute for Water of the Republic of Slovenia.
Combined top-down and bottom-up approach. The current management situation of river corridors in South East Europe is very mixed. What they have in common are many incompatible interests and pressures along the river corridors, notably with a transboundaryscale. However, contemporaryrivermanagement in line with EU directives needs to be integrative both for different sectors and geographical levels: SEE River, therefore, has combined economic development and nature conservation interests with top-down and bottom-up participation methods, consistently involving local, national and international actors.
It also introduces the river corridor as the core part of the catchment area where most pressures are concentrated and therefore integrated solutions are most needed. The overall goal is the harmonised and sustainable use of river corridors in their individual settings and development visions.
National seminars in all ten project countries in September and October will inform about the active engagement of many stakeholders on SEE pilot rivers.
The project started with an analysis of the existing diversity of administrative and management procedures as the prescribed legal framework to be observed by the responsible national or local authorities when planning and managing certain human uses (e.g. water abstraction for agriculture and industry, nature conservation, transport, tourism) or functions (e.g. retention of flood waters, recreation, landscape image) in riverine areas.
The analysis also questioned the actual level of stakeholder involvement, such as of other government bodies, local communes, NGOs, land owners or agriculture.
Developing stakeholder involvement. One key activity of the SEE River project was a river corridor analysis and development process. At least three local workshops were held in each country to jointly discuss the complex river uses along the Soča, Neretva, Bodrog, Prut, Vjosa and Drava rivers – the latter subdivided into five national pilot areas. In addition, international river workshops were held to incorporate the transboundary dimension of the corridors.
Discussions were held to stimulate local stakeholder networks and to create multi-sectoral stakeholder agreements on the future development vision and concrete management tasks for each river corridor. This includes various local follow-up activities and follow-up project proposals from SEE River partners. Stakeholders further agreed on a Joint Drava River Corridor Action Plan that will be presented to the bilateral border river commissions of Drava countries.
The download section of the project webpage (www.see-river.net) presents a directory of integrative river management models from all over Europe that are briefly presented in their key aspects and achievements. They are available to all interested stakeholders as useful examples of experience about innovative river development.
Leading diverse interests to win-win solutions. The early, continuous and active engagement of many stakeholders in a river corridor is both demanding and rewarding: It assesses the vested interests and leads to jointly supported solutions. Therefore, the lessons learned from the SEE River project and the results produced at the local and international level will be presented at national seminars in all ten project countries in September and October. This is necessary as there are more rivers in the Danube and Balkan regions where this toolkit can be applied to expand integrative river corridor management and engage more people working – effectively – hand in hand for rivers.
