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EcoAdvance European Project

Freshwater restoration: alive and well in Europe - Don’t miss this briefing!

EcoAdvance, MERLIN and ESP, Freshwater restoration: alive and well in Europe

3rd to 9th July, 11.30 CEST

Don’t miss this briefing!

  • Welcome – Phyllis Posy
  • Showcases and how they can be used – Lessons learned from EcoAdvance – Mark Morris and Phyllis Posy
  • Freshwater Nature-based Solutions: turning systemic goals into real-world impact – Lessons learned from MERLIN – Sebastian Birk and Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber
  • Highlights from ESP2025 in Darwin
    • What you might have missed – Conference takeaways
    • Nature-based solutions for rivers and more habitat restoration examples from Lithuania – Vytautas Narusevicius
    • Restore 4Life – Cristian Mihai Adamescu
    • YESS: A post doc’s view – Miguel Rinacio
  • What’s Next? – Growing the Ecosystem Service community
    • Networking through ESP groups to amplify Ecosystem Service methods and share resources – Katerina Atanasovska
    • One EcoSystem Journal – Publishing to support dialogue and collaboration on Ecosystem Services – Iva Boyadzhieva
    • How to get involved in ESP2026 in Praha –Davina Vackarova
  • Questions and answers

Please register here: https://project-merlin.eu/webinars.html 

Four innovative projects and four innovators showcased at our DALIA Danube Lighthouse joint Clustering event last week in Budapest.

Nice to meet in person as we wrap up EcoAdvance (Horizon Europe) and our work showcasing the people who make a difference.

Inspiring talks by Michal Kravčík, Máté Chappon, Atila Bezdan and David Attila Molnar highlighted key evidence of progress on freshwater restoration in the Danube region. They summarized the Showcases, presenting lessons they learned on what makes projects prone to success.

**Advice from Prof Bezdan: avoid jumping straight into technical details without first building trust and shared goals with stakeholders. Don’t overlook local knowledge or skip genuine community engagement.

**Dr. Molnar outlines his 5 easy steps – and how he helped persuade communities in 9 Danuabe countries to join the fight agains plastic pollution: 1.Write a protocol. 2.Try to follow it. 3.Learn to change it. 4.Get used to improvise. 5. Document everything.

**Dr. Kravcik focuses on small water cycles and has seen the Big Change it has made:: In Slovakia, many people already know that retaining rainwater in a damaged country is essential for the future of the country.

Different challenges,different solutions, different countries, but all agreed on the central methodologies: From community dialogue on allocating resources and land to reduce flooding while preserving navigation with Nature based solutions, riverboats that find plastic trash hotspots, innovative constructed wetlands to reduce pollution and improve water quality, and research on harmonizing the water cycle, these innovations represent strides in implementation the hashtag#EuropeanGreenDeal. Hear the voices and perspectives of more innovators in freshwater restoration at https://lnkd.in/ebhnKNzv 

Join us online for the EcoAdvance Side Workshop!

Join us online for the EcoAdvance Side Workshop! - Hear about what drives successful freshwater restoration! 

June 17 | Online during the DanubeSediment_Q2 (Interreg) Stakeholder Event in cooperation with DANUBE4all Project

Workshop Structure:

  • Part 1: Welcome, Keynotes, DanubeSediment_Q2 Integrated Sediment Managagement Plan and the DANUBE4all Restoration Action Plan (see agenda for details)
  • Part 2: Presentations from other water-related projects, followed by the EcoAdvance Breakout Session

During the EcoAdvance session, we’ll present insights from our Horizon-funded project and explore what drives successful freshwater restoration:

  • Navigating conflicting interests
  • Engaging stakeholders and local communities
  • Building synergies across projects

 

Your input matters – join us online!

Register here: https://lnkd.in/dnNEJxXj