The Himleån pilot makes strides in engaging the community in water management
Set up in 2009, the Himleån Water Council consists of landowners, and representatives from Vivab and Varberg municipality. The catchment area is approximately 201km2 and hopes to increase knowledge about the catchment area and improve water management in the area.
Through the water council, landowners and farmers are being encouraged to take water samples in 20 places across the catchment. The results will be evaluated alongside elevation data and erosion maps, to get a real picture of the impacts on the water quality.
The samples will be used as a starting point for planning next steps and will enable more opportunities for seeking funds to help implement various types of measures to reduce nutritional losses from the arable land and reduce eutrophication.
Additional to this, the council has arranged a series of lectures on measures in agriculture such as structural scaling, protection zones, and wetland sites to reduce nutritional losses and soil erosion. Some 60 farmers and government officials have participated to date.
It isn’t just farmers and landowners participating in the water council either, schools are also showing an interest in embedding it into their curriculum to help educate the next generation. The programme hopes to help students invent and explore aquatic environments in the surrounding area of the school – looking at nature, culture and history as well as ecosystem services in and around the water. So far, almost 30 teachers in 3 schools are interested in rolling this out into their school.
We are looking forward to hearing how this pilot evolves throughout the project.