Implementing Nature-based Solutions for Water Retention and Climate Resilience in Europe (SpongeWorks)

The ever more frequent floods and droughts of recent years are increasingly bringing the need for new landscape adaptation strategies to the attention of the public and strengthening the social will to make landscapes more resilient to climate change. The extent of the regional impact of such extreme weather events ultimately depends in particular on the natural ability of landscapes to retain water and release it in controlled quantities – similar to a sponge. Nature-based measures with a so-called "sponge function" are increasingly becoming a sustainable approach to increasing the resilience and water retention capacity of landscapes.

This is where the European research project SpongeWorks comes in. The effectiveness of multifunctional sponge measures is being demonstrated in three large-scale demonstration areas in the European river catchment areas of Pinios (Greece), Lèze (France) and Vecht (Netherlands/Germany). The implementation of 19 different measures – from agricultural practices to the renaturation of rivers and moors – should ultimately inspire and enable other European regions to also promote "sponge landscapes".

A total of 28 consortium partners, at least 23 knowledge partners and over 300 other stakeholders will be involved in Communities of Practice (CoP). The expertise of the Ecologic Institute team will be particularly useful in the areas of stakeholder integration and co-creation, as well as in the up-scaling of the measures at EU level. To this end, the dissemination of success stories and empirical values, future sponge scenarios and a "toolbox" of economic instruments will be helpful outcomes of the research project.

The project website offers exciting insights: SpongeWorks