CONCEPT NOTE Danube Living Labs – A framework to stimulate implementation of innovative solutions for water related risk management at local level, in the Danube basin. Pilot application: Potelu Living Lab

APPLICANTS:

Business Development Group (www.bdgroup.ro ) WWF Romania (www.wwf.ro ) Contact: Florentina Nanu Contact: Camelia Ionescu E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]

STAKEHOLDERS (ROMANIA): • Local council Ianca (https://www.comunaianca.ro/ ) • Local council (http://primariagurapadinii.ro/ ) • Local council Orlea (https://www.primariaorlea.ro/ ) • Local council (http://www.grojdibodu.ro/ )

POTENTIAL PARTNERS FOR POTELU LIVING LAB (ROMANIA): • River Basin Administration Jiu (http://www.rowater.ro/dajiu/default.aspx ) • River Basin Administration Olt (http://www.rowater.ro/daolt/default.aspx ) • Water Company (www.apaoltenia.ro ) • Universitatea Craiova – Facultatea de Geografie (www.ucv.ro ) • Environmental Protection Agency Olt ( http://apmot.anpm.ro/ro ) • Environmental Protection Agency Dolj ( http://apmdj.anpm.ro/web/apm-dolj/date ) • Research & Development Station for Plant Cultivation on Sands (http://www.ccdcpndabuleni.ro/en/home/ ) • Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest (www.utcb.ro ) • National Institute for Hydrology and Water Management (www.inhga.ro ) • GeoEcoMar ( www.geoecomar.ro )

General While at the Danube basin scale strategies create a sustainable framework for action, acknowledging and managing water related risks at local level is generally a major challenge. Solution lies in creating collaborative models centered on communities to support strengthening their capacity to assess risks, identify the most appropriate solutions to mitigate and implement them as well as manage these solutions on long term within local and regional contexts.

1 Final draft 03.08.2018 CONCEPT NOTE Danube Living Labs – A framework to stimulate implementation of innovative solutions for water related risk management at local level, in the Danube basin. Pilot application: Potelu Living Lab Romania The Potelu Living Lab initiative aims at giving access to firsthand information on available knowledge and solutions (grey, green and soft) to local communities and opening the dialogue for knowledge providers and regulators to the reality of living in close interaction with the Danube waters. At the same time the LL will facilitate citizens’ involvement and stimulate their interest and trust to incorporate innovations from business and academia into local development in a sustainable manner, on long term.

Problem description Currently several initiatives strive to promote the renaturation of the Lower Danube Green Corridor without expected impact in practice. The legal and institutional fragmentation is leading to barriers that sometimes make impossible to combine academic approach, funding resources and different layers of authorities, although there is a common agreement for reaching community well-being.

A large part – about 80% - of Danube's wetlands have been lost in the past century because of human intervention. The construction of dikes reduced the size of the river’s floodplains considerably. Nowadays, the effects of floodplain loss are exacerbated by the climate change leading to desertification and historical floods along the Danube. The new climate conditions negatively impact agriculture, which is the main economic activity in the area.

The proposed site for applying the living lab approach is Potelu, which was one of the most productive floodplain areas along the lower Danube River, with large lakes, e.g. Potelu Lake, and multiple floodplain wetlands, channels and other morphological features providing a variety of habitats and services for local population. The entire area was drained between 1965 and 1966 on a surface of 14,445 ha as a reclamation project in order to make room for agriculture based on complex irrigation system. Still, a large part of Potelu area is suffering from climatic conditions (floods or droughts) proving the existence of not-adapted irrigation system to the new climate conditions impacting at the end the local economy. In order to cope with the new conditions, the local communities are willing to diversity the local sources of incomes, including re-create part of the former Potelu lake.

The Potelu Living Lab, where all stakeholders could actively contribute to solutions for water risks management based on a collaborative way of working at the grass roots, will facilitate new models of interaction that cannot be produced by an organization on its own and will overcome the existing obstacles in practical implementation. Articulated solutions technically and economically substantiated will be attracted, adjusted and developed involving local communities. These refer to solutions for flood and drought risk mitigation but also to projects generated in parallel such as greening, eco-tourism, improved agricultural practices or circular economy approach. A living lab aims at creating continuous dialogue and has a vital role in generating sound solutions including overcoming research bottlenecks and driving the innovation forward. The Potelu Living Lab , where citizens, authorities and organizations come together for co-designing and co-managing practical solutions, could be the needed sustainable framework for putting climate adaptation measures into practice at local level in the Danube region.

Specific targets Along the Danube and in the Danube Delta using nature based solutions for floods and drought management is a set objective of ICPDR and national management plans but at the same time, for many years, an open subject for debate as regards practical implementation.

The extreme floods of 2006 and the ones that followed in the recent years have contributed to increased favorability towards solutions involving flood plain restoration but the actual implementation of such solutions is hindered by obstacles ranging from local capacity to identify and select the appropriate solution to establishing ownership and managing correctly the benefits and the co-benefits of such projects.

The Potelu Living Lab is focused on the idea to put the local community in the driver seat for increased capacity to transform local challenges into opportunities. Specifically this involves to partner between different stakeholders for developing local capacity to identify and manage solutions to mitigate climate extreme events and increase resilience of population, environment and economic activities and at the same time to design and implement those solutions that also directly impact on local development and restore the attractiveness of the region for different population categories. The combination of water related risk mitigation actions which also build on economic opportunities will be at the core of the Potelu Living Lab approach.

2 Final draft 03.08.2018 CONCEPT NOTE Danube Living Labs – A framework to stimulate implementation of innovative solutions for water related risk management at local level, in the Danube basin. Pilot application: Potelu Living Lab Romania The community in the area of the former Potelu pond (the communes Ianca, Orlea, Grojdibodu and Gura Padinii) will be used to coagulate a pilot living lab by building on the existing experience of WWF project Lower Danube River Corridor - Floodplain Restoration Opportunity Analysis 1 and BDG activities within Horizon 2020 project NAIAD 2 by proposing a Platform for Public-Private-People Partnership to foster practical steps to solutions.

The aim of the platform is to bring together owners of the water related problems with the owners of the potential solutions and foster the implementation of the appropriate solution or combination of solutions that could support improved resilience and adaptation to extreme climate events.

The Potelu Living Lab will be developed as an open-innovation ecosystem bridging with academia and private sector for attracting parallel research initiatives and innovative processes and, at the same time, working with the local community for increased capacity to understand climate adaptation in technical terms and as regards benefits and co- benefits in local and regional development contexts.

Activities planned for testing the Potelu Living Lab solution

The setting and operation of Potelu Living Lab will follow the “ Guidelines for developing & implementing Living Labs for Climate Services in urban planning” 3.

List of planned activities: - Community-based research and inventory of most suitable solutions for flood & drought mitigation for the area (aquifer recharge, adapt the water screen from mining sector, no regret measures for wetland restoration, etc.) - Community-based integration of existing and new technologies to generate additional co-benefits (crops, water based tourism activities, circular economy, etc.) - Co-creation of solutions and common decision on implementation options involving different people and groups affected (ex: Sketchmatch) - Implementation models including funding and financing options and business planning (ex: knowledge exchange with other successful wetlands restored) - Setting up a framework for benefits and co-benefits long term monitoring and evaluation

BRIGAID support will be used for testing the living lab concept in the water sector in the local context by: - Assessment of the existing local infrastructure and the needs for basic upgrade to match Potelu Living lab activities (basic hardware, software & presentation infrastructure, etc.) - Research on potential innovative concepts/ products suitable for the local context - Promote the Potelu Living Lab as a dialogue platform and attract research, education and private sector partners to share their products and cooperate with the user communities, not only for testing and observation purposes but also as a source of create - Organization of workshops (2 –beginning and end), working sessions (monthly local meetings), knowledge sharing activities (1 or 2 visits to other successful wetland restoration projects) and editing of reference materials

The Lessons learned from the pilot implementation and testing will be used to adjust the approach for replicating the model in similar situations along the Danube.

Project planning (tentative)

Start: September 2018 Implementation period: 6 months Final report: March 2019

1 http://www.wwf.ro/ce_facem/dunrea_i_delta_dunrii/impreun_pentru_dunre_un_proiect_wwf_coca_cola_/ 2 www.naiad2020.eu 3 ” (http://eu-macs.eu/outputs/livinglabs/ ).

3 Final draft 03.08.2018 CONCEPT NOTE Danube Living Labs – A framework to stimulate implementation of innovative solutions for water related risk management at local level, in the Danube basin. Pilot application: Potelu Living Lab Romania BRIGAID Minimum requirements for an innovation application (self-evaluation)

• has been developed by an innovator with legal representatives in a EU or associated country

The Living Labs are the new tools used to change the paradigm in order to involve as many stakeholders as possible and to transfer into practice for testing or for implementation new technologies, ideas, concepts, etc. The European experiences with Living Labs setup in more areas of activities have proved successful (European Network of Living Labs – https://enoll.org/projects/).

Relevant concepts and solutions are going to be inventoried in partnership with research and education partners (UTCB, University of Craiova, etc.) or build-up on previous relevant pilot projects with international participation. For example aquifer recharge and energy storage solutions are already well established concepts worldwide. They were already tested in the region within MARES (a Dutch – Romanian G2G project in 2011) proposing for the first time the idea to adapt the mining technology with underground screen for aquifer retention in the areas close to the Danube where the speed of the aquifer is increasing leading to droughts, desertification and shortages of water for population supply. As the South of Dolj and Olt counties have suffered both from floods and droughts, ideas as wetland restoration or aquifer recharge are supported by local communities as well as of the Regional Water Companies that encountered problems to supply water to the population in the periods of droughts.

• mitigates impacts from floods, droughts or extreme weather events

The Potelu Living Lab will be focused on promoting nature based solutions, blue, grey or soft measures that could support the mitigation of extreme climate events. The wetland restoration that is proposed through this pilot could lead to the environmental status improvement and fit in the current targets to reconnect the Danube to its floodplain in order to mitigate the floods and the droughts affecting the Lower Danube regions.

The potential concepts taken on board by the LL Potelu will primarily target mitigation of flood, droughts and extreme weather events

• is at a technical readiness level (TRL) of 4 or higher (i.e. a prototype has been developed and is ready for further testing in the lab or field)

While the Living Lab concept is applied at international level in many sectors, their role in facilitating innovation in the water sector needs more practical exercise especially at small scale tackling water challenges at the “grass roots”. The current initiative aims to provide evidence and guidance to support water related living labs initiatives making a step forward from TRL 7 towards TRL 9.

• is a structural, software or nature based solution

The Living Lab is a complex environment to enable innovation in real context. The Potelu Living Lab aims to be a platform where users and producers of different types of solutions (grey, green, soft) are able not only to test and experiment in real life conditions but also to combine solutions in accordance with specific local needs for mitigation of climate extreme events.

4 Final draft 03.08.2018