Partnerships

THE CHALLENGE

The Danube River Basin is Europe’s second largest river basin, the most international river basin in the world and a significant lifeline for Europe. On its 2,800 km journey from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the river passes through ten countries and drains all or part of nineteen countries. Approximately 83 million people live in the Danube River Basin and more than 20 million people depend directly on the Danube for their drinking water.

However, over the past 150 years, the Danube basin and its wetlands have been much abused. Dikes, dams, cuts, bank fixation and dredging have modified large parts of the river system. More than 80% of wetlands have been lost, and with them the ecosystem goods and services they provide. The effects have been wide‑ranging and include plummeting fish and wildlife populations, decreases in water quality and damage to wetlands, which are no longer able to provide much needed biodiversity hotspots or to act as buffers to floodwaters - services that are becoming all the more valuable in the face of climate change.

OUR SHARED GOAL

The Living Danube Partnership is a unique cross-sector collaboration that unites WWF-CEE, The Coca-Cola Foundation, and various stakeholders to improve watershed health in the Danube basin. In doing so, the initiative aims to strengthen climate resilience while delivering benefits for local communities and nature.

We plan to achieve this by leveraging collective action to:  

• Implement restoration of floodplains, and wetlands, and demonstrate their ecological and socio-economic benefits;  
• Demonstrate and promote good water stewardship, particularly concerning watershed management, nature-based solutions, and land use, especially agriculture practice;  
• Engage and promote a change in mindset and awareness of water and water stewardship among decision-makers from politics and business.  
• Promote a supporting environment of policy and legislation, finance, and funding as well as demonstrated collective action.  

The pressing challenges caused by nature degradation, biodiversity loss and the freshwater crisis are intrinsically linked, and addressing them is critical to mitigating the worst effects of climate change. Collective action by industry, governments and conservationists are essential to delivering long-term positive impacts for nature restoration and the protection of essential ecosystems, and through that, building greater resilience to climate- and water-related risks.  

THE IMPACT OF WORKING TOGETHER

Since the initiation of the programme in 2014, the Living Danube Partnership has enabled more than nine projects across six countries in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia and Romania. 

Supported by a USD 4.4 million (EUR 3.73 million) grant from The Coca‑Cola Foundation, the first eight‑year phase of the partnership has sought to restore vital wetlands, rivers and floodplains along the River Danube and its tributaries, aiming to increase the river capacity by the equivalent of 4,800 Olympic sized swimming pools (12 million m3) and to restore over 7,422 football pitches worth of wetland habitat (53 km2) by 2021. This progress was made possible by building on funding from other partners and initiatives, such as the EU LIFE Nature program, GEF/World Bank, and others.

Altogether, the Living Danube Partnership leveraged nearly EUR 20 million from EU sources for river and wetland restoration, amplifying the impact of The Coca-Cola Foundation’s support.

The partnership will continue to focus on restoring essential wetlands, floodplains and tributaries along the Danube River, building on the success and impact delivered through the cross-sectoral programme over the past ten years. 

KEY PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS

In the first phase of the partnership (2014 - 2021), the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) joined WWF-CEE and The Coca-Cola Foundation to promote the conservation and restoration of wetlands in the Danube basin.

Restoring rivers and wetlands depends on cooperation among diverse stakeholders. The Living Danube Partnership has involved collaboration with partners from a range of backgrounds and perspectives, from water management to nature and forest management, municipalities and county governments, land owners and land users, local anglers and hunters as well as entrepreneurs, who have come and worked together to restore rivers and wetlands for the benefit of people and nature.

In 2020, Coca-Cola Europe was honored with the "Partnership of the Year Award" at the REUTERS Responsible Business Awards for its collaboration with WWF-CEE and the ICPDR. The award recognized the Living Danube Partnership’s innovative model of cross-sector cooperation.

In the second phase of the partnership, WWF-CEE and The Coca-Cola Foundation were joined by Тhe Coca-Cola Company in Europe and its bottling partner Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (CCHBC). They will support activities focused on demonstrating water stewardship and engaging businesses for collective action. In this part of the programme, there are also three pilot areas for water stewardship development, in the Iskar River Basin in Bulgaria, Upper Mures in Romania, and Bereg in the Hungarian Tisza River floodplain. CCHBC will also seek to improve land and water use in the supply chain and natural water retention.  

LOOKING FORWARD

The partnership extension will focus on projects across six countries, namely Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Slovakia, and Czechia, building on the water resilience work done in many of these countries during the first phase of the partnership. In the extension of the partnership, we are expanding the scope of the programme from nature restoration towards community resilience that will include interventions in agriculture and urban areas, whereas in prior years many projects were in remote and rural areas. New project work will include sites in Hungary (upper Tisza floodplain) and Czech Republic (Krušné Mountains).  

The second focus pillar of the Living Danube Partnership is on water stewardship. We demonstrate and promote good water stewardship, particularly with regard to watershed management, nature-based solutions, and agriculture. In order to reach the good status of the Danube basin, a change in mindset and awareness of water and water stewardship among decision-makers from politics and business is necessary. WWF-CEE works towards achieving a greater awareness among the private sector in the Central and Eastern European region and willingness to become active stewards of the watershed they are active in or source value from. Collective action on the pilot watersheds Iskar Basin (Bulgaria), Upper Tisza watershed (Bereg region in Hungary) and Upper mures watershed (Romania) is underway.