The CEWP Lot 1 ”Water Management and Ecological Security” has organized several workshops and seminars in autumn 2019.
Third Workshop on Policy recommendations, 9 Oct. 2019 in Tianjin, China
The third workshop on CEWP-PI Lot 1 Policy recommendations took place on 9th October 2019 in China. This event was designed to review the progress made on policy recommendation elaboration for each project. Small group talks have also been organized to allow each project to work concretely on the elaboration for the roadmap of policy recommendation elaboration process.
France, Portugal, Finland and their Chinese counterparts (Hai river water conservation commission, Taihu Basin Authority, IWHR) attended this event, as well as 20 other participants from MWR bureaus and institutes.
The level of progress achieved by each project was presented and the event has allowed agreeing on deliverables to be submitted at the high level meeting in November. A new presentation of the roadmap elaborated in April 2019 has been proposed and several questions have also been addressed, on the focus of the studies on water management planning and stakeholder participation & the categorization of policy recommendation
Seminar on Lake Restoration and Shallow Lake Management, 21 Nov. in Shanghai, China
The aims of the seminar were to communicate on the good practices and recent trends in Integrated Water Resources Management and Shallow lakes management, and expand the Sino-Finnish pilot in Lakes Taihu and Pyhäjärvi under Lot 1 into a network of Shallow lakes including e.g. Lake Peipsi in Estonia, and Lake Ijssel in the Netherlands.
The seminar was intended for local authorities in provincial departments of Ministry of Water Resource, and Ministry of Ecology and Environment, in Taihu basin.
The seminar had 40 participants, 7 from Europe and 33 from China.
The first part of the seminar focused on the good practices of integrated water resources management, with presentations by Lot 1 partners. The afternoon session focused on the special challenges related to management of shallow lake ecosystems. The challenges addressed were related to multiobjective management (recreation, water supply, fisheries and ecosystem), transboundary issues, internal loading, food-web interaction and climate change.
The program of the seminar can be found here.
Presentations of the seminar:
- CEWP Introduction, Turo Hjerppe, Finnish Environment Institute
- Integrated Water Resources Management Based Lake Restoration (InteRest), SINO-Finnish Cooperation
- Modelling external loading and use of real-time measurements, Dr. Ahti Lepistö, Finnish Environment Institute
- Management and challenges of Lake Peipsi, Lea Tuvikene, Estonian Universityof LifeSciences
- Co-operation and water resources protection in Lake Pyhäjärvi, Dr. Anne-Mari Ventelä, Pyhäjärvi Institute
- Shallow lake ecosystems and management implications, Dr. Anne-Mari Ventelä, Pyhäjärvi Institute
- Lake Ijsselmeer, Ton Garritsen, Ministry of Infrastructure and Water management
- Stakeholder participation in regional river basin management in Finland, Sanna Kipinä-Salokannel, Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment for Southwest Finland
- The story of Lake Taihu interpreted from the scientific literature, Turo Hjerppe& Anne-Mari Rytkönen, Finnish Environment Institute
On Friday 22nd the participants had the chance to visit shallow lakes Taihu and Changdang (also known as Taohu). In Lake Taihu the visitors saw the automatic water quality monitoring station. In Lake Changdang the excursion went to see the ongoing restoration of the lake ecosystem, including riparian zone restoration, wetland construction, dredging of the sediment and relocation of fisheries.
As a result of the seminar and discussion with shallow lakes network the aim is to produce a policy paper on “Multiobjective management of shallow lakes” on a multilateral basis. The dialogue will be continued in a series of workshops in 2020.
Study visit in France (Paris, Sophia-Antipolis) and Portugal (Lisbon, Coimbra, Evora), 18-24 Sep. 2019
The objectives of the mission were the following:
- Presentation of European, French and Portuguese water management context and institutions
- Technical exchange of experience and best practices
- Practical work on elaboration of policy recommendation and approval of documents that will be presented at the High Level Meeting in November 2019 in Guimaraes, Portugal.
- Discussion on project application to call from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and from Europe.
- Technical exchange of experience and best practices on ecological flows management
In France, the partners discussed the level of engagement for the extension of the phase 3 of the bilateral cooperation project on Hai River Basin and t the Sino-French cooperation on the occasion of the COP on biodiversity to be held in Beijing in 2020. They also met and discuss main lines of cooperation with the representatives of the French Agency for Biodiversity, the Seine Normandie French Water Agency, the French water clusters, IRSTEA : the National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture, etc. Finally, both the Chinese and French partners shared on the CEWP-PI policy recommendations.
In Portugal, discussions focused on Ecological Flow project, Flood Modelling project and policy recommendations. The Chinese partners met with several representatives of the University of Evora and laid the basis for potential other cooperation topics with France, Portugal. This provided an opportunity for finding the knowledge gaps between Portugal and China on ecological flow and restoration standards.