Twice a year, RECONECT project partners meet to discuss progress and achievements on the implementation of the EU Nature-based Solutions (NbS) project. The 9th General Assembly (GA) took place from 22 to 26 May in Hamburg, one of the consortium’s key city partners.
Hamburg’s main waterway, the Elbe river, connects the city to the North Sea and over the past decades has turned the city’s harbour into the second biggest in Europe. The Elbe estuary is a RECONECT demonstrator site where NbS approaches are being implemented in order to reduce the risk of flooding whilst also ensuring optimal water storage capacity for times of drought.
A full 3-day meeting agenda was prepared in order to allow time for all different project components to be discussed and provide sufficient space for coordination and debate amongst all demonstrators and collaborators. The meeting was opened by Senator Jens Kerstan, Head of the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Energy and Agriculture (BUKEA).
“We are entering a very fruitful period of the Reconect project”, said Zoran Vojinovic, RECONECT coordinator, “as we are embarking on the final year of its lifespan and many efforts are coming to fruition and showing results”. Mr Vojinovic, Associate Professor at IHE Delft, coordinates the project’s transdisciplinary partnership of researchers, industrial partners (SMEs and large consultancies), authorities and agencies at local and watershed/regional level.
Activities from demonstrators were presented, including the evaluation of NbS applications as well as challenges and issues, for example the Portofino pilot area in Italy where strong weather events have resulted in the need for more robust NbS measures to ensure slope stabilisation and erosion reduction.
Poster presentations from the project’s European and international collaborators, including the Chao Phraya River Basin in Thailand, allowed for wider discussions on the challenges and feasibility of NbS applications. A good understanding of what NbS is, as well as land acquisition for NbS implementation came out as the two most challenging issues for progress and scaling up.
The RECONECT project also works closely with other EU “sister projects”, such as Operandum and Phusicos. On the last day a presentation was delivered by EU project ‘Clever Cities’ which works towards urban regeneration in several European cities using co-monitoring and co-creation as ways forward for greater collaboration and impact.
The GA was followed by a two-day fieldtrip showcasing NbS sites in the City of Hamburg and its vicinity, guided by Christian Ebel and Angelika Gruhn. It included a tour through the Heuckenlock nature reserve, one of the last tide-influenced and unmodified banks on the Elbe River, and several stretches where the dike has been moved further inland to provide more space for the Elbe river, such as Kreetsand, Tatenberger Spitze and Wrauster Bogen dikes as examples for nature-based solutions and floodplain restoration.
The study trip concluded on Friday, when the group was joined by experts Dr.-Ing. Natasa Manojlovic, Senior Research Associate at the Hamburg University of Technology, as well as Moritz Müller from the State Agency for Roads, Bridges and Waterways and Dr. Stephanie Brandt from the Ministry for the Environment, Climate, Energy and Agriculture who explained the installation of the fishladder at the Alster Lock at Jungfernstieg, emphasizing the ecological importance and goal to provide river continuity as a measure to comply with the EC Water Framework Directive. During the ensuing walking tour within the new district of HafenCity and along the St. Pauli Landungsbrücken, the largest landing site in Hamburg’s port and one of the city’s major touristic attractions, participants learned about the specific flood protection measures within HafenCity which lies outside the main dike line protecting the inner city, and visited the flood protection facility at Landungsbrücken completed in 2019.
