September 2021 marked the official kick-off for the DBU funded “BaltAqua” project, which intends to initiate a dialogue process in order to build a partner network between German and Baltic actors in the water sector.

With the Sustainable Development Goal 6, the United Nations established the importance of ensuring the availability of clean drinking water and sanitation for everyone and securing sustainable management of water as a vital resource for unlocking economic growth and productivity. Yet, the water management sector is facing growing challenges, such as increased pressure on groundwater resources due to climate change, and nitrate pollution from intensive agriculture. These problems manifest particularly on local and regional levels, as evident in the Baltic States as well as North-West regions of Lower-Saxony, Germany. Both regions do not only share comparable geographical characteristics but also face similar pressures on the supply and demand of their water resources. Therefore, these shared experiences present a hitherto largely untapped potential for expanding cooperation among water management actors from both regions.

Various potential priority themes can be identified as starting points to stimulate knowledge transfer and cooperative solutions, inspiring the joint development of strategies and projects, including but not limited to:

• Alternative supply concepts, e.g. water reuse
• Watershed management impact on aquatic ecosystems
• Management of groundwater bodies (e.g. nutrient pollution, water quantity)
• Impacts of climate change (e.g. salinization)
• Regional and sustainable supply chains
• Holistic approaches to sustainable regional development governance
• Digitalisation

The project team from the OOWV and COAST (Oldenburg University) is now in the process of reaching out to potential network partners.

You can find more information in the project outline here