For Benoît TERRIER - Rhône-Mediterranean and Corsica river basin - ‘the usefulness of the CoP is obvious. The communication tools developed by other members, innovative examples of how to engage stakeholders, the sharing of ambitious integrated cases studies or simply sharing lessons learned and difficulties has provided inspiration to further promote river restoration.’
For Polona Pengal – Kamniška Bistrica Catchment restoration champion - ‘personalized sharing of information and experience and direct consultation with peers in river restoration helps us to transfer the best suited practices from around Europe to countries where river restoration has not yet taken hold. Having a foreign expert explain the benefits of river restoration to our stakeholders works much better than saying it ourselves.’
For Olly Southgate - Cumbria and Lancashire River Restoration Programme Manager - ‘sharing best practice and learning from each other is extremely important and enables us to constantly review how we can do things better and on a scale that can make a greater difference. Sharing knowledge and real life experiences with other practitioners also helps to drive, enthuse and motivate others to do more for both people and the environment’
For Jean Rousselot, Basses Vallées Angevines Romme, Angers, France - 'meeting new persons, sharing bad and good experiences but also legal frameworks and tools are crucial to improve our practices, both in the office and on the field. The CoP is a great way of exchanging on technical and policy matters but it has also the possibility to raise awareness by promoting experiences to countries and regions less engaged today. Connecting people will offer new possibilities in the future to expand our practices,
CoP Activities.
- Develop the CoP towards the heart of a loose river restoration practitioners network, as a section of the wider ECRR Network of eNews subscribers..
- Launch the revived CoP by a web page (section) at the ECRR Networking Event at the European River Symposiun 2021.
- Intensify and professonalise the use of the existing Facebook account.
- Set up a story line of the CoP on the ECRR website, where 4 or 5 times a year theCoP will add new information (lessons learnt from projects for examples and demonstration) wi a broad scope of River Basin Restoration. This is complementatry to the ECRR Technical Newsletter...
- To make an online video and photo data base of best practices river basin restoration.
- To insert the CoP into the organisation and governace structure .of the ECRR Association.