Ecosystem-based flood and drought management in river basins

- Different data, discharge, evaporation, humidity, temperature, etc., is owned by different institutions. Some of them do not share their data as they consider it a loss of power. This needs to be considered as early as possible. The project used drones for collect additional data on the river discharge.- Datasets were partly incomplete. The missing information does not allow to analyze and quantify certain effects, therefore the results of the assessments still include uncertainties.- Being seen as a local wisdom, these measures have the full support from the local community and are financed and implemented by local stakeholders. This has gained them a lot of attention and interests from Thai government institutions.- However, there is a lack of scientific backup. This leads to construction without proper planning and without coordination with the local water management institutions. In the past newly constructed weirs were built in wrong locations at the wrong time, underestimating the river flow during an early flood season , which caused damage or even destruction of the incomplete structures- Raising awareness on physical and socioeconomic impacts of climate change has increased the acceptance of EbA measures by local stakeholders. However, further knowledge is needed to erase belief on false effects of EbA measures and to convey to stakeholders in which locations EbA measures are feasible.- The river basin committees (RBCs) in different river basins were at very different stages at the beginning of the project. Some were fully established, which allowed easier communication with the local population as well as cooperation between local stakeholders, public sector and academia. Other RBCs had not held their first meeting when the projectstarted. Here local stakeholders took strong ownership over their water recourses, which allowed the project to progress while the RBC was still in the process of being established.- Tangible examples and good practices on EbA measures help relevant stakeholders to get a better understanding on EbA concepts and its benefits.- At the same time, EbA measures cannot simple be copied to other river basins and relevant people need to be made aware of the need for river basin-specific vulnerability assessments.- International institutions/ experts need to be aware about the knowledge management as well as learning structures of the local institutions and be willing to adapt their own approach accordingly.