Ecologic Institute's Ulf Stein presented first insights of the INTERREG IVb project DROP during the International Conference on Regional Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARR 2014) in Bremen. DROP is trying to enhance the preparedness and resilience of northwestern European regions to periods of drought and water scarcity. In his conclusions he developed messages for the domains of natural science, policy and water management. The presentation slides are available for download.

As part of his presentation, Ulf Stein highlighted preliminary observations that the governance team gathered after the first round of stakeholder interviews in the pilot regions. One major finding was that governance settings need to become more supportive to help drought policy implementation. In many cases collaborative and participatory management approaches offer a good option to overcome these shortcomings.

Ecologic is part of the Governance Team consisting of five European research institutes. The Governance Team pursues the assessment of regional water governance settings in six pilot areas by means of stakeholder interviews. The Governance Assessment Tool [pdf, 1 MB, English], as developed by DROP, is available for downloaded.