On Thursday 27 May, 19 stakeholders from various sectors took part in the first national workshop, organised in the Mura River pilot area in Slovenia. The workshop was organised as part of the IDES project (Improving the Water Quality of the Danube River Basin through the Introduction of Integrated Floodplain Management and the Identification of their Ecosystem Services).
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After more than a year of measures restricting contact due to the pandemic, both the organisers and participants were delighted to meet in person on the beautiful ‘Island of Love’ in the village of Ižakovci, which is situated directly on the left bank of the River Mura at the heart of the pilot area. The pilot area is defined within the inland water body of the River Mura, where both banks of the river lie within Slovenia, stretching from Gornja Radgona to the confluence of the Ščavnica and the Mura.
The aim of the workshop was, first and foremost, to present the project and the concept of ecosystem services, and secondly, to gather input from stakeholders for the DPSIR framework (drivers, pressures, state, impact, response). The DPSIR method is useful for describing interactions between society and the environment.
A multi-criteria analysis was used, in which stakeholders provided their assessment of synergies and trade-offs between various ecosystem services in the pilot area of the River Mura. This is the so-called bottom-up approach, which will, amongst other things, ensure the legitimacy of further activities within the project.
The most widely recognised ecosystem services in the pilot area were that the area serves as a source of drinking water, followed by the fact that the area serves as a floodplain for flood protection, and that it is important for the conservation of biodiversity.
The most widely recognised pressures were invasive alien species, followed by drought and the construction of infrastructure such as weirs and bank protection works. Consequently, the most frequently proposed measures were the prevention of the spread of invasive alien species and the restoration of oxbow lakes and floodplains.
The IDES project (Improving the Water Quality of the Danube River Basin through the Introduction of Integrated Floodplain Management and the Identification of their Ecosystem Services) is co-funded by the European Union (ERDF, IPA funds).
For further information, please visit the project website: www.interreg-danube.eu/ides.
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Contact:
Peter Suhadolnik, project coordinator at IzVRS,
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