Official launch of the EUROLakes project in Italy
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Rivers and Lakes
We officially kicked-off the EUROLakes project on 16-18 October 2024, in a meeting at Viterbo, Italy. Wetlands International Europe will coordinate this 4-years project, that gathers 13 consortium partners aiming to safeguard and restore European natural lakes and their ecosystems.
The meeting took place at UNITUS university campus in Viterbo (center of Italy). During three days, the project guidelines, timeline, policy context and methodology were presented to the EUROLakes partners by work package leads and experts from CINEA, DG MARE, Landscape Finance Lab and our project-team from Wetlands International Europe. Two sister projects were also put in the spotlight, namely FERRO and ProCleanLakes, offering collaboration opportunities and best-practice exchanges.
A full day was dedicated to a field visit to Lake Vico, one of the project’s demo sites, where partners could learn about the main issues that this lake is facing and possible ways to mitigate them.
An innovative approach
The EUROLakes project officially started on 1st September 2024 and its goals align with various EU instruments and policies, including the Water Framework Directive and the Green Deal.
Co-funded by the EU (CINEA), EUROLakes offers an innovative, holistic and science-based approach to protect and restore European Lakes and their ecosystems: the 4Returns Framework for landscape restoration. This methodology seeks sustainable, long-term nature-based solutions at landscape level, as well as financing opportunities by achieving “4 returns”: Inspiration returns, social returns, natural returns and financial returns.
To achieve these 4Returns, project partners will engage with local communities to develop integrated protection and restoration strategies in three demo sites: Lake Vico in Italy, Lake Bistreţ in Romania and Lake Dümmer in Germany. And we won’t stop there! EUROLakes supports the replication and scaling-up in other regions. This is why we will also select three additional lakes that will serve as replication sites afterwards.
The next EUROLakes consortium meeting will take place in Spring 2025.