SpongeWorks: Co-creating and Upscaling Sponge Landscapes by Working with Natural Water Retention and Sustainable Management

As climate change intensifies, landscapes across Europe must adapt to the changing frequency and intensity of floods and droughts. Traditional water management practices are often inadequate and can even exacerbate these growing challenges, making it essential to adopt nature-based solutions. Fostering sponge measures as nature-based solutions to boost the natural retention function of landscapes is promising, but implementation must be rapidly upscaled and innovative approaches to increase the integration, involvement and cooperation of diverse actors from local to basin wide levels are urgently needed.

SpongeWorks aims to demonstrate practical, effective, economically feasible and inclusive approaches and solutions towards enhancing the sponge functioning of interconnected groundwater, soil and surface water systems at regional scale. It applies an integrative multi-actor approach to demonstrate the effectiveness of multifunctional sponge measures for improved water and soil management for enhancing water retention in three large demonstrators - the Pinios (GR), Lèze (FR) and Vecht (NL/DE) river basins. In each demonstrator, SpongeWorks evaluates existing sponge measures, draws lessons-learned and best practices, and implements new sponge measures. The effectiveness of large-scale implementation is assessed to co-create long-term sponge strategies with action plans and roadmaps at landscape scale. Broad dissemination of best-practices, promotion of exemplary demonstration areas as lighthouses, and targeted replication in eight associated regions ensures long-lasting impact of this work.

SpongeWorks contributes to transformative change of landscape management to ensure regions are more adapted and resilient to climate change impacts on soils, waters, habitats and biodiversity. By combining scientific excellence and practical know-how from established communities of practice, as well as facilitating mutual learning and sharing of successful strategies, SpongeWorks will catalyse a shift in the pace of implementation of sponge measures and strategies across Europe and beyond.

The working group of Landscape Planning and Ecosystem Services serves as overall project coordinator. The group also leads a work packages on “Co-creating sponge strategies”. The work package aims to develop and deploy a just and inclusive multi-actor approach for co-creating sponge strategies at basin scale to enhance climate resilience and generate co-benefits for soils and biodiversity.

Project website: www.spongescape.eu