DANUBE AWARENESS DAY in  Vienna

On 13th September 2018, Danube STREAM organised the second intersectoral seminar for representatives from the navigational and the environmental sector. Back-to-back with the ICPDR Joint Statement meeting in Vienna and in cooperation with the partner project DANUBEparksCONNECTED, the seminar brought experts from both fields together for discussion.

Viadonau presented the draft Danube STREAM good practice report on environmentally sustainable waterway management practices, followed by Plovput, who illustrated good pracices on stakeholder involvement in Serbia. Afterwards, Priority Area 6 of the Danube Region Strategy (Biodiversity) provided recommendations and requirements from their perspective.

The last block of the conference was made up by a high-level panel discussion with Helmut Habersack (BOKU), Željko Milković (Sava Commission), Désirée Oen (DG MOVE), Horst Schindler (Danube Commission) and Ivan Zavadsky (ICPDR), moderated by Georg Frank (DANUBEparksCONNECTED) and Gert-Jan Muilerman (viadonau). The panellists discussed on how to balance good navigation status and good ecological status in practice. Furthermore, common experiences and lessons learned after 11 years of Joint Statement on Inland Navigation and Environmental Sustainability in the Danube River Basin were discussed as well as their implications for the ongoing Joint Statement process.

In the afternoon, the 9th Joint Statement meeting, organised by ICPDR, took place at the same venue.