Living Danube Partnership — Drava River Side-Arms Restoration (Croatia)

The Living Danube Partnership pairs WWF Central & Eastern Europe and The Coca-Cola Foundation, with the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) as technical partner, to restore rivers and wetlands across the Danube basin. Between 2014 and 2021 the Coca-Cola Foundation contributed $4.1 million, leveraging more than €20 million in EU and state co-financing across nine restoration projects in six countries. In Croatia, the partnership co-financed reconnection of Drava river side-arms within the Mura-Drava-Danube Transboundary Biosphere Reserve, implemented alongside Croatian Waters (Hrvatske vode).

In Croatia, the project restored seven side-arms and reconnected 14.5 river kilometres between 2015 and 2024. Across the whole partnership, restoration work delivered approximately 5,462 hectares of restored rivers, wetlands and floodplains and an estimated 13.45 million m³ of water replenished annually; the programme won 'Partnership of the Year' at the 2020 Reuters Responsible Business Awards and reported reaching over 87,000 Danube basin residents directly through outreach and events.

Public reporting aggregates results at the partnership level rather than breaking out hectares or water volumes restored by the Croatian side-arms project specifically, and no post-restoration species counts for the Croatian site have been published, so the biodiversity gain there is inferred from documented outcomes at comparable sister sites rather than site-specific data.