From gentle streams to churning rapids, rivers define our landscape, history, society and economy. Today, we contain, block and completely reshape them to meet our needs for land, energy, industry and navigation, but recent catastrophic floods show that rivers cannot always be tamed. We need to work with nature, and not against, if we are to strengthen our resilience to extreme wet and dry spells triggered by climate change.
On 2 July in Brussels, WWF will launch the "Rivers2Restore" project, presenting 11 case-studies across Europe where restoring the natural shape and flow of rivers, and reconnecting them to their floodplains, would bring huge benefits to society, the economy and nature, including lessening the impact of floods and droughts. These projects will also contribute to the EU’s target to restore 25,000 km of free-flowing rivers by 2030.
You’ll hear from a range of expert speakers including decision-makers and those who have lived through devastating floods, on the importance of river restoration.