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Launching the BeWater project outscaling campaign

Wednesday, 30 November 2016 Posted in News, BeWater News

The BeWater project is entering its final phase, with the publication of the four River Basin Adaptation Plans marking a major milestone. Having worked for the past three years with local stakeholders in Pedieos, Tordera, Rmel and Vipava, it is now time to reach out to the wider community sharing the experiences obtained during the project.

The four River Basin Adaptation Plans foster adaptation to climate change through a novel approach integrating science and society. As important they are for the individual river basins, they also aim to serve as a reference for other basins - within the Mediterranean region and beyond - that wish to undertake such a participatory adaptive water management process to increase their resilience. The project’s outscaling campaign currently launched aims to disseminate the project’s results to stakeholders not involved in the project so far that might be interested in leveraging the lessons learnt.

In this framework, the BeWater website has been updated with a results section, to document the challenges identified by local stakeholders for each river basin, the water management options formulated by them as a response to each challenge and the adaptation plans, including the bundles of water management options according to their synergetic interactions and the common objective they contribute to, as well as the priority adaptation actions proposed, according to their feasibility, acceptability, cost and policy synergies. The design material used for this section has been developed within previous stages of the project’s awareness and dissemination campaigns, both for local as well as wider audiences.

Moreover, the BeWater approach and results have been and will continue being presented at numerous international, European and Mediterranean conferences and workshops on water and adaptation. For example, researchers from the BeWater project team participated in multiple sessions and events of the recent COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco. A project brochure, video, policy brief, posters and other materials will be produced that describe the BeWater approach and results.

Finally, local policy fora will be organised in each of the BeWater case study river basins in early 2017 to raise interest for policy uptake of the adaptation plans. To raise awareness about the project at the European level, a concertation workshop and policy seminar will be organised in Brussels in February 2017, while the River Basin Adaptation Conference, to take place in Slovenia in March 2017, will share science-society interactions as developed within the BeWater project and other initiatives.