PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
The Finnish landscape is dominated by water. There are thousands of lakes, streams and vast coastal areas with archipelagos and open sea areas. According to a survey published in March 2023, nine out of ten Finns consider clean waters are important not only to their identity but also for health, nature, and local appeal. According to the survey, 74% are concerned or deeply concerned of the state of the Baltic Sea, whereas 45% have the same concern for inland waters and 32% for groundwaters. Strategic water management- and protection plans date back to the 1970s. Already the River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs) for the first round (2010-15) included specific quantitative measures for all sectors and pressures. However, the aim of reaching and maintaining good status of surface waters, groundwaters and marine waters is not yet fully achieved: 13% of the lake area (3,480 km2) and 32% of river kilometers (10,352 km) are in worse than good status, despite measures already implemented. Over 80% of the Finnish coastal water area (28,397 km2) is in worse than good status, whereas groundwaters are largely in good status. The diffuse loading of nutrients, solid inorganic and dissolved organic substances, and acidic substances mainly from agriculture, forestry and in coastal areas’ maritime traffic, continue to cause deterioration of waters. Additionally, historical accumulation of nutrients in sediments contributes to and sustains eutrophic conditions in many lakes and marine ecosystems. Hydro-morphological alterations in surface waters have changed natural habitats and, in many cases, have led to heavily modified water bodies. The Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC, WFD) and Marine Strategy Framework Directive (2008/56/EC, MSFD) both require a good status of aquatic environment. The measures to achieve the objectives for surface and groundwaters are set in RBMPs and the MSFD Programme of Measures (PoM).
OBJECTIVES
The overall objective of ACWA LIFE is to catalyse the achievement of good status in waters through enhancing the full implementation of the RBMPs by removing all administrative, financial, structural, and other barriers.
The specific project objectives are the following:
- - Boost the implementation and targeting of measures by promoting comprehensive catchment-based planning approach, developing catchment-scale coordination of activities, promoting methods for effective prioritisation and targeting of water protection measures, implementing concrete measures for load reductions and mitigation of harmful effects of human activities, and carrying out restoration measures.
- - Strengthen cross-sectoral cooperation by engaging local and regional stakeholders of all sectors in river basin management, improving cooperation between them, enhancing know-how, competence, and holistic understanding of river basin management. Furthermore, the responsibility of implementation of measures and the importance and impact will be improved. The knowledge of the efficiency and costs of load prevention and mitigation measures will also be improved.
- - Achieve an in-depth understanding of the source-to-sea dynamics to mitigate the impact of pressures occurring in the catchment area, waters flowing into the sea, as well as pressures occurring in coastal and offshore areas, and providing improved indicators, models, and e-tools to support focused planning of future RBMPs.
- - Improve implementation of control mechanisms such as policy instruments by starting roundtable discussions to advance development of policy instruments, making an economic analysis to get an overall understanding of the flow of costs and benefits in RBMPs, and piloting impact investments and performance-based financing in water and natural resources management.
- - Mobilise complementary funding by establishing a complementary funding strategy which supports mobilisation of at least 30 complementary large-scale projects and by promoting and targeting supplementary measures identified in PoM, to be nationally implemented with complementary funding.
RESULTS
The expected results are:
- Construct at least 13-18 km of two-stage ditches, 30 flood plains and wetlands and 35 rock ramp and threshold solutions in 5 demo areas combined with other nature-based water management solutions. In addition, detailed implementation plans for 150 nature-based solutions.
- Enhance nutrient recycling by implementing a pilot for transfer of 2,500-5,000 kg of excess manure phosphorus to 10-20 crop farms to reduce eutrophication.
- Improve water protection by piloting and scaling up 4 potential new nutrient and acidic load reduction methods.
- Improve water and nutrient retention capacity and reduce nutrient and erosion load from at least 3,000 ha of drained peatland.
- Reduce the load of nutrients and hazardous substances from stormwaters with different methods (e.g. PFAS removal, biofilters, nature-based solutions).
- Reduce the load of nutrients and hazardous substances in 5-7 most significant Finnish ports.
- Execute basic restoration measures, such as migration barrier removal and habitat restoration in around 40 sites in streams and biomanipulation by removal of planktivorous and benthivorous fish in 4 lakes.
- Implement at least 2 agricultural stream restorations to enhance stream-riparian zone interaction and hydro-morphological heterogeneity.
- Foster lake recovery from past loading by piloting innovative lake restoration measures for nutrient recovery on 2 lakes.
- Provide best practices and methods in marine ecosystem restorations, e.g. to decrease internal nutrient loading in 2 coastal bays with aluminum treatment, remove dead filamentous algae and dead plant mass in 25-40 sites, and improve biodiversity of large reed covered areas in 4-6 sites.
- Produce 5 general level catchment-based plans covering 5,663 km2 and 6-9 detailed action plans with an impact on 400-800 km2 catchment areas.
- Produce advisory packages for agricultural water protection on farm scale (629 advisors) and a toolkit for forestry planners and contractors.