From 17-19 April 2024, a major international conference on free-flowing rivers took place in the city of Groningen in the north of the Netherlands. With around 450 participants, the conference focused on the protection and restoration of free-flowing rivers – a perfect opportunity to present the IRIS project to a broad expert audience and make new contacts.

In five parallel sessions, around 130 speakers explored various aspects of free-flowing rivers. The topics ranged from EU-wide strategies to the objectives and benefits of nature-based solutions, the effects of restoration on ecology and people, river restoration tools and specific restoration projects. Two sessions were dedicated to the presentation of successful LIFE projects. The IRIS project was represented at the conference by the two project leaders Helena Mühlmann and Martin Wenk with a presentation and a poster.

In the extensive supporting program of the conference, which included a variety of activities such as workshops, excursions and even a “Free Flow Yoga” session, the IRIS team had many opportunities to exchange ideas with international experts from different fields. Networking between science, administration, NGOs and environmental activists is particularly important in order to create mutual understanding and pursue common goals.

What can other countries learn from IRIS?

Today, many European rivers are in a rather poor condition and the decline in biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems across Europe is a major problem. Austria is no exception. More than half of Austria’s rivers currently do not meet the objectives of the EU Water Framework Directive. The main reasons for this are the heavy regulation of many rivers and the effects of power plant operation. Ecological objectives are often left behind.

In modern river management, it is therefore important to find solutions that combine ecological goals and flood protection. And this is exactly what the IRIS project is all about. In order to reconcile flood protection and ecological goals, IRIS is breaking new ground in river management. Instead of different, local and sometimes even contradictory individual projects, IRIS is developing concepts of measures for the entire river basin. This approach attracted a lot of interest at the conference.