1- What have you been working on in recent months?
During these past months, we have been following the roadmap of the Action Plan. In first place, by preparing a submission for a National Call funded by NextGenerationEU, for a project to establish a ‘Green Corridor’ in the River Monnegre from the dam of Tibi to the river mouth in the municipality of El Campello. It would connect 22 km by foot or bike of spaces of nature, leisure, education and culture, while being efficient against floods. Rehabilitation and revalorisation of this route would recover places and create new ones, creating business opportunities in all the area.
As a first step of the project, it has been approved and signed an agreement between the Municipalities of the area and the Provincial Council of Alicante to work together to develop common strategies towards the ‘Green Corridor’ of Monnegre River.
Additionally, the interaction with other stakeholders has been quite intense during this period.
2- Have there already been any results that you would like to share?
This period has been particularly exiting from the point of view of the results achieved by the stakeholders group by itself. WaVE has created a momentum around water-linked heritage and the revalorization of the river Monnegre and the orchard of Alicante that is pushing the society.
One of the most fertile collaborations has been the interaction with the TERRA Project. This project aims to contribute to the protection and enhancement of the cultural heritage around the territory of the antique orchard of Alicante and aims to create the bases to restructure the region in an inclusive and sustainable manner. To do this the project has developed a training and informative program aimed at administrations, entities, associations and society as a whole. The Municipal Councils of Sant Joan d'Alacant, Mutxamel, El Campello, Alicante and Tibi have institutionally adhered, as well as numerous entities of various kinds, social agents and interested citizens. The WaVE team is being part of the project from its very beginning, contributing to build the stakeholders group (shared with WaVE stakeholders’ group) and to design/develop the activities.
3- What unforeseen difficulties have you encountered?
NextGeneration EU program is changing the policy instruments, and while there are new opportunities, we have had to adapt the actions to the new policies, that also have different managers to those contacted during the previous WaVE phases.
4- Are you satisfied with the progress you have made so far?
In general, we would say that we are very happy with the progress because we have been able to put water-linked heritage in the politic agenda and to gather an enthusiastic team of stakeholders. However, we still have not received any funding for the ‘Green Corridor’, that is required in order to begin the transformation and to keep the stakeholders engaged in the long term.
5- What challenges do you expect in the coming months?
The main challenge is to influence the NextGeneration EU calls to obtain funds to develop the ‘Green Corridor’ of River Monnegre project. In addition, we will try to launch other new proposals for the
Alicante Region where water-linked heritage plays an important role for achieving the change to a greener economy.
