Sustainable Integrated Management of International River Corridors in SEE Countries 
Rivers in SEE region are often threatened by unsustainable use, increasing human pressure, and problems of increased floods and droughts driven by climate change. Inhabitation of floodplain areas, hydropower utilization, navigation, gravel and sand extraction, unsustainable tourism etc. lead to changes in morphology, increased pollution, degradation of aquatic habitats, as well as land use conflicts. The most pressures in a river basin occur along river corridors, challenging the sustainable water and riparian land use. The common EU legislation, in particular the Water Framework Directive, the Flood Directive, the Habitat Directive, the Birds Directive and the Renewable Resources Directive, gives a framework to develop processes and practices for sustainable river management. However, such sectoral objectives are often antagonistic and provide a challenge for river managing authorities when it comes to the implementation phase. The main objective of the SEE RIVER project is to empower the multi-sectoral stakeholders sharing the territory of an international river corridor to gain knowledge on planning and implementing processes for integration of existing sectoral policies, plans and programmes in order to reach consensus on integrative management of international river corridors, taking into account both the development and the conservation interests. This will be achieved by developing the SEE RIVER Toolkit - a joint approach for establishing common frameworks for integrative management of international river corridors in SEE. Such framework will be established for the Drava River and initiated on 5 other SEE rivers: Bodrog, Prut, Soča, Neretva and Vjosa rivers. The River Frameworks will use a cross-sectoral participatory approach to reach consensus among international stakeholders on the joint vision, goals and measures for sustainable management of river corridors. The project added value is that it does not aim at preparing new sectoral management plans, nor invent new costly managing structures to improve the management of river corridors. It rather provides a framework for utilising the existing management structures and sectoral policies, plans and programmes. The project aim is to simplify and rationalise the procedures for reaching synergetic solutions between development and conservation interests of stakeholders along international river corridors. Through application of the Toolkit and the Frameworks on 6 SEE Rivers the project will improve the transboundary and multi-sectoral cooperation of existing bodies responsible for the management of river corridors in 14 SEE countries. This will increase the capacities and skills for consensus building among policy making and implementing bodies from different sectors in SEE. This way the project will improve policy making processes which we believe is the only way to long term improvement of the quality of life along the river corridors and in the wider SEE region.