Integrated application of innovative water management methods at river basin by coordination of local governments

The goal of the LIFE LOGOS 4 WATERS project is to improve climate resilience of local municipalities. It will be achieved by mitigating the negative water-balance situation through the demonstration of integrated ecosystem-based water management solutions applied at the catchment level.
The project will use a bottom-up planning process and involve multiple local stakeholders in a coordinated implementation of Natural Water Retention Measures (NWRMs) to reduce climate vulnerability stemming from water-related events. It will also address the loss of freshwater ecosystems through restoration; improvement of aquatic habitats, and smoothing streams and rivers discharges through retention of excess water. The project team will promote the uptake of these measures for climate adaptation through knowledge transfer, capacity building, and replication activities.
Specific project objectives are to:
* Demonstrate catchment-level multi-stakeholder cooperation and decision-making regarding implementation of NWRMs under municipal coordination on two different types of small catchments (one upland and one lowland catchment), and to share experiences with local governments and the water-management sector;
* Develop knowledge and capacity of actors involved in planning, licensing and implementation of green-blue infrastructural solutions (water engineers, water engineering students, public authorities, municipal decision-makers and experts, water management professionals) regarding the integrated use of NWRMs at local and catchment-level, to enhance mainstreaming the use of ecosystem-based solutions in local climate change adaptation;
* Build a supportive environment for the water-retention based climate adaptation through propagating and reinforcing the approaches ‘water is valuable’ and ‘water is the key to climate adaptation’ among municipal level leaders, government level decision-makers and the general public;
* Map and collect relevant decision support systems, modelling tools, best practice databases, guidelines, handbooks and other tools, make them easily and widely accessible and usable for local municipality leaders and staff in order to support efficient local and catchment level climate adaptation strategies and actions;
* Build international relations and knowledge of local governments, authorities and organisations responsible for climate adaptation to increase their capacity and access to national and EU funds that support ecosystem-based adaptation measures, and increase their potential to build international partnerships;
* Incorporate the approach of integrated retention-based water management and close-to-nature climate adaptation into the complex planning and regulatory mechanisms in order to establish a common point-of-view among the affected actors.
* The project contributes to the implementation of three actions of the EU Adaptation Strategy (implementation of the national adaptation strategy, urban adaptation action, bridging the knowledge gap); the EU Biodiversity Strategy; EU waterpolicy (Water Framework Directive, Floods Directive, Water Scarcity and Droughts Strategy, Groundwater Directive) and Hungarian river basin management plans and the national water strategy; and the EU Strategy for the Danube Region.