The overall goal of the project is to improve climate resilience of local municipalities by mitigating the negative water-balance situation through the demonstration of integrated ecosystem-based water management solutions applied in small catchments in a coordinated manner, and the promotion and increased uptake of these measures for climate adaptation.

Specific project objectives

1. To test and demonstrate catchment-level multi-stakeholder cooperation and decision-making regarding implementation of NWRMs under municipal coordination on 2 different types of small catchments (one hilly and one lowland catchment). To share experiences with local governments and the water-management sector.

2. To develop knowledge and capacity of actors involved in planning, licensing and implementation of green-blue infrastructural solutions (water engineers, water engineering students, public authorities, municipal decision-makers and experts, water management professionals) regarding the integrated use of NWRMs at local and catchment-level water management. To enhance mainstreaming the use of ecosystem based solutions in local climate change adaptation.

3. To build supportive environment for the water-retention based climate adaptation through propagating and reinforcing the approaches ‘water is valuable’ and ‘water is the key to climate adaptation’ among municipal level leaders, government level decision-makers and the general public.

4. To map up and collect relevant decision support systems, modelling tools, best practice databases, guidelines, handbooks and other tools, make them easily and widely accessible and usable for local municipality leaders and staff in order to support efficient and sound local and catchment level climate adaptation strategies and actions.

5. To build international relations and knowledge of local governments, authorities and organizations responsible for climate adaptation in order to increase their absorption capacity and access to national and EU funds that support ecosystem based adaptation measures, and increase their potential to build international partnerships.

6. To incorporate the approach of integrated retention-based water management and close-tonature climate adaptation to the complex planning and regulatory mechanisms in order to establish a common starting point of view among the affected actors.