Rhine Reimagined: A Future-Forward Plan for Nature-Based Management

The plan “Rhine Reimagined: A Future-Forward Plan for nature-based management” describes the long-term vision, key policy and management plans, key stakeholders and long-term actions that help upscale the nature-based solutions needed for sustainable use and ecosystem management. Note that the term “management” in the title reflects river management on the delta-scale, including the design, implementation, and management of individual (nature-based) measures. Rijkswaterstaat (RWS) is the initiator of this regional scalability plan (RSP) while other key stakeholders were consulted and provided input in this first version. The RSP is targeted at all the relevant stakeholders, for example within RWS the colleagues of the Dutch Programmatic Approach Large Waters (PAGW) program and of the new Dutch Integrated River Management program (IRM) in 5 to 10 years. The plan guides the long-term development and the aim is to let core components land in stakeholders’ own long term policy and implementation plans. The content of this document was developed as part of the MERLIN project (https://project-merlin.eu), funded under the H2020 program of the European Commission. Most of the groundwork was conducted by the Dutch MERLIN project team, consisting of RWS and Deltares colleagues, whereas input from a variety of PAGW colleagues and stakeholders from Provinces of Gelderland and Overijssel and waterboards, was gathered during several workshops in the period 2022-2024. As such this is the first version of this plan and it will be revised as needed during the MERLIN project and beyond.

 Marieke de Lange, Joost Backx (Rijkswaterstaat), Gertjan Geerling, Tom Buijse (Deltares)