Free Flow Project
The Free Flow Project focuses on the question of how dam removal is understood as a river restoration tool and applied in relation to the new European biodiversity target of freeing up 25.000 km of river stretches within 2030. The Free Flow Project was initiated by the World Fish Migration Foundation as one of the Dam Removal Europe activities. It aims to mainstream and scale up dam removal in the river basins of Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt, and Ems. This can be achieved by stimulating knowledge exchange, connecting practitioners, celebrating success stories, and opening up discussions in the river basin network.Free Flow Webinars
Within the Free Flow Project, two webinars were held. The first webinar was held on November 29th, 2022, as part of the International River Symposium in Vienna. It focused on ways to protect and restore free-flowing rivers and how dam removal can be applied as a river restoration measure to reach the European biodiversity target. In the second Free Flow webinar held online on May 23rd, 2023, the main focus shifted to countries sharing the river basins of the Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt, and Ems. The countries’ river commissioners discussed how they are moving forward on achieving the target and where possible bottlenecks lie.
About Free Flow 2024
Free Flow 2024 is an international conference on protecting and restoring free-flowing rivers. Organized by the World Fish Migration Foundation and the Institute of Fisheries Management, this 3-day conference will take place on April 15-17, 2024 at Oosterpoort, Groningen, The Netherlands.Rivers are under threat and freshwater biodiversity is in decline. More than ever, finding solutions to build climate resilience and safeguard rivers becomes pressing for the future of nature and people. It is in this light that the Free Flow Conference seeks to connect practitioners and scientists, and promote knowledge sharing while communicating the amazing work that has been done so far! Special emphasis is given to barrier removals as a tool to achieve the EU 2030 Biodiversity goal of freeing up 25,000 km of rivers. This was also recognized as a pressing issue at the COP15 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, where calls for urgent action to protect and restore our rivers have been strong.
Sessions will cover major environmental conservation topics including successful international and national policies, habitat restoration, research and evaluation studies, the value of free-flowing rivers, food security, species protection, nature-based solutions, rewilding concepts, climate change resilience, river connectivity, and others. Alongside the conference, there will also be side events, exhibitions, poster sessions, film screenings, and an evening celebration at which the winner of the European Dam Removal Award 2023 will be announced.
For more information regarding the conference, please contact Neza Posnjak at neza@fishmigration.org
