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Reflections From The Waterdrive Project Conference in the Kaliningrad Region

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Reflections From The Waterdrive Project Conference in the Kaliningrad Region

The international conference “Water sector in agriculture: current trends in the Baltic Sea region and the Russian experience of the Waterdrive project” was held in the Administration of Guryevsk municipality on the 3rd of June 2021. More than 50 participants took a part in the event among them representatives of local and regional authorities of the Kaliningrad region, experts from Saint Petersburg and foreign experts from Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden, Poland. During the meeting, the participants discussed relevant issues of agriculture related mainly to its ecological aspects: measures for preventing the nutrient load from agricultural lands, issues of melioration, involvement of wetlands into the agricultural cycle, etc.

The foreign speakers presented to the audience their experience of implementing nature-based solutions for reducing nutrient runoff from agricultural lands – design of wetlands, recovering excess of nutrients from water objects by creating floating wetlands (cases from the LifeLagoon project of Interreg. South Baltic program). The experts from Saint Petersburg shared their methods of interaction with stakeholders by creating the “School of farmers” and cooperation with agricultural enterprises for the best practices implementation. In addition, the participants discussed the developments carried out within the framework of the Waterdrive project in the Kaliningrad region by the Administration of Guryevsk municipality and the features of the application of sustainable solutions at the local level.

Author and photo: Irina Popova, Guryevsk Municipality, Kaliningrad region