Maintain the commitment of project actors

Planning ➤ Assemble an experienced and committed team ➤ Maintain the commitment of project actors

The issue

Motivated people are an absolute must for projects to succeed.

What some of our showcases say:

Mihai: there needs to be someone there who is motivated from the start

You can read up on this here:

Marina Petrić

Monitoring and Restoration officer - WWF Adria

NGOs & Civil Society

Cross-border restoration
Floodplain
Landscape-scale planning
Cross-sector collaboration

Marina Petrić was selected as a Recreating Freshwater Showcase because she played a key role in a transboundary freshwater restoration project within one of Europe’s most ambitious ecological initiatives—the Amazon of Europe in the Mura–Drava–Danube Biosphere Reserve. Her work at WWF Adria involves coordinating complex restoration efforts across national borders, institutions, and ecosystems, making her perspective highly relevant for understanding the challenges and opportunities of large-scale, integrated river restoration.

Her interview provided valuable insights into:

Practical restoration measures, such as side-channel reconnection and floodplain forest restoration;
The importance of institutional cooperation and the difficulties of working across multiple countries with differing regulations and priorities;
The role of the Restoration Task Force as a platform for stakeholder engagement and knowledge exchange;
Lessons in adaptability, persistence, and stakeholder diplomacy in the face of institutional and logistical challenges.

Overall, her contribution highlighted both the technical complexity and social dynamics of successful freshwater restoration, offering important lessons for practitioners working in multi-level governance contexts.

Mihai Cristian Adamescu

Researcher
University of Bucharest/Research Center in Systems Ecology and Sustainability

Scientists & Researchers

Compiling approaches and methods that have worked in freshwater restoration
Establishing a living platform
Holistic projects needed
Re-establish trust with local stakeholders, co-design measures

Mihai has over 20 years of experience with freshwater ecosystems. He has been working in the Danube Delta, with the LTER network and is now coordinating a large project that gathers knowledge, tools and stakeholders across the Danube basin, with testing methods on four demonstration sites and six monitoring sites.

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