What is river Restoration?
River restoration is a stepping stone to urban regeneration and sustainable development. It aims to improve the resilience of the river systems restoring its natural state and functioning. It encompasses all the activities undertaken to rehabilitate degraded watercourse to its possible natural, stable and healthy condition. Restoration monitoring is critical part of successful river restoration for the adaptive management of the restoration project.
River restoration is carried out with various intended outcomes and most restoration actions are site specific. Although there is growing interest in applying ecological River restoration techniques yet little agreement exists on what constitutes a successful River restoration effort. The ecological restoration includes having a “guiding image”, setting correct priorities and identifying appropriate trajectories and reference states.
The earliest River restoration projects were launched in Europe.The restoration of Rhine, Danube , Thames have put milestone in history of River restoration.The restoration priorities, after drainage management, are bringing back natural flows in European Rivers by channel reconfiguration, fish passage, riparian management, in-stream species management, floodplain reconnection, aesthetics and water-quality management. In case of developing countries, the environmental priorities are neglected since it competes with other national priorities such as poverty alleviation, basic education or health care for fund. The River restoration activities in these countries have been limited in River cleanup activities like controlling pollution and establishing waste-water treatment plants.
Bagmati river restoration
The concern that the conservation of Bagmati River system is a key issue to sustain Kathmandu valley ecologically and culturally, Bagmati river restoration has been initiated under the guiding framework of Bagmati Action Plan prepared by NTNC in 2008. Additionally, Strong civil society movement and public's general interest in the restoration as “Bagmati Cleanup Campaign” (May 19, 2013 present) has accelerated the restoration activities.
Why restoration monitoring?
While the initiatives are underway, a restoration monitoring is necessary to measure the performance at a measurable scale. Effectiveness monitoring (EM) is a critical component of an adaptive management approach to ecosystem restoration necessary to provide information on whether restoration actions are meeting goals or whether future actions are necessary.
