As progress of work of the ESPID4Vjosa project team was conducted the first round of workshops with representatives of the local government, civil society organizations and the local community of the Vjosa river basin. The first round of workshops was conducted in Tepelenë, Vlorë, Përmet and Gjirokastër by the project team in cooperation with international and national experts. The first round of workshops aimed to increase the theoretical capacities in the function of careful decision-making, to receive data and to draw up the problems in a local perspective related to the problems of the Vjosa river.
The international experts prepared six topics, which are related to the problems of Vjosa. The key topics were: water supply and wastewater treatment, floods and flood risk management, hydropower and energy, resource management and agriculture, protected areas and tourism.
Representatives of the local government and civil society organizations discussed the problems of the Drino River and the upstream, middle stream and downstream of the Vjosa River and reflected them on the maps prepared by the experts. The information received during the round will be processed by the experts in the form of briefing papers and will be distributed to all interest groups.
In total, three rounds of workshops will be organized and in the next phase the workshops will mainly focus on providing solutions and transferring knowledge from the experiences of other EU countries.