Re-naturalisation of rivers in urbanised areas. Opportunities to develop green-blue infrastructure, retention and flood protection based on interdisciplinary research.

Introduction

Facing the growing challenges of climate change, the EU is directing its efforts towards sustainable development, including the efficient use of water resources based on the European “Blue Deal”. One of its primary goals is to restore and protect ecosystems, wetlands and biodiversity. This gives rise to concepts related to the renaturalisation of river courses for water retention or effective flood protection. Such initiatives may directly affect the functioning of inhabitants living in communities in highly urbanized areas and may lead to social tensions and conflicts.

Objectives and Methods

On the initiative of the Upper Silesian Metropole (GZM), an interdisciplinary research project was carried out to identify the possibilities of restoring the network of water reservoirs to increase retention and strengthen the development of blue-green infrastructure. The project involved close collaboration between researchers from history, hydrology, biology, geography and the social sciences, where the findings of each discipline guided the methodological assumptions of all the others. The methodology of qualitative sociological research (10 semi-structured expert interviews and three FGI) directly referred to the results of historical, biological and hydrological analyses. The focus group discussions with inhabitance of local communities in urbanised areas were triggered, by visualizations of historical changes in local rivers correlated with their current bio-hydrological condition and digital risk modelling, including flood risks, and potential ways to avoid them based on re-naturalisation measures.

Results and Conclusions

The analysis of the empirical material made it possible to identify the basic directions of activities related to the selected river's re-naturalisation processes, the difficulties that may arise during the potential implementation of such projects, and the social costs and potential conflicts of various interest groups that their implementation may bring. Recommendations for the re-naturalization of rivers in a participatory manner respecting the values of different social-political groups were also developed.