There are certainly good practices in the European regions which work together on tourism along inland waterways. For instance, the Naviglii Lombardi, the Watertriangle in South-Holland, the way to involve stakeholders in Tipperary, the co-operation along the Danubii in Hungary and Slovakia and the reservation of nature in Latvia. All those regions articulated their learning needs during the SWARE project meeting in Clonmel (County Tipperary, Ireland) on the 1st and 2nd of March. Here the preparation for the Interregional Knowledge Exchange Sessions finally started.
Next semester, starting from April 2017, will feature three Interregional Knowledge Exchange Sessions in three regions of Europe: Metropolitan City of Milan, the province of South-Holland and Tipperary County Council. During these Sessions, project partners, joined by relevant stakeholders and national managing authorities, will examine and discuss good practices and possible solutions regarding governance structures; connecting tourism with infrastructure and heritage; and promotion, marketing and public relations.
Good practice study visits will be undertaken as walkshops at relevant sites, small-circle discussion workshops, in-depth discussions with project experts and stakeholder interaction in small-group and plenary meetings. This method allows including several sub-topics and retains the overall perspective on policy improvement, based on existing good practice examples. The lessons learned during these visits will help to develop Regional Action Plans – the most important outputs of the SWARE project and addressing the improvement of policy instruments related to natural and cultural heritage management along inland waterways. The first Interregional Exchange Knowledge Session is expected to take place at the end of May.
During the project meeting in Ireland all participating regions presented their regional State of the Arts documents, which reflected regional good practices on water related natural and cultural heritage policies from a governance and awareness-raising perspective. The documents also outline the main issues for improvement in the regions. All of the final regional State of the Arts documents will be available on the project website.
The overall objective of the SWARE project is to foster integrated management of natural and cultural heritage within inland waterway regions by improving the partner regions’ related policy instruments in order to create a better balance between the protection and sustainable exploitation of the natural resources and the built heritage sites.
Project SWARE is implemented with the support of European Regional Development Fund and Interreg Europe Programme 2014-2020. This publication reflects the author's views only and the Interreg Europe programme authorities are not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.
