Sustainable value chains for rural areas

RePro - Resources from the Land: Model Projects for Sustainable Land Use Concepts

Ansicht Teichkläranlage Uebigau-Wahrenbrück
© Erwin Noack

How can water and energy infrastructures in rural regions be combined in such a way that they secure supply and disposal and at the same time contribute to regional value creation?

inter 3 is investigating this question in its pilot project in the East German model regions Elbe-Elster (Brandenburg) and Wittenberg (Saxony-Anhalt). The project will be funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) until 2013. In cooperation with the Technical Universities of Berlin and Cottbus, and Anhalt College, innovative concepts for sustainable resource usage in rural areas are being developed and put to the test in the model regions.

Technical and commercial, as well as financial and strategic concepts for effective resource and infrastructure usage are being developed, and local re-use chains are being built up. Re-use chains add value to waste materials, wastewater or waste heat. Central to this is the support of entrepreneurial approaches for optimising material and energy, as well as economic and social, re-use in rural areas.

Objective: Robust re-use chains for rural infrastructures

The objective is to set up one to two organisationally and financially robust re-use chains in each model region, which can be developed further by the regional actors using their acquired know-how. The participating scientific partners will provide the technical, economic, strategic and regional knowledge necessary for implementing these re-use chains. inter 3 as overall coordinator is organising  the cooperative work of the research network. Further to this, inter 3 is providing innovation management, public relations work and technical concepts for the water branch.

Results: Entrepreneurial approach – steering value-added chains

Individual re-use chains in the model regions are strengthened to the point of economic sustainability. Other regions should also be able to profit from the results of this project. To achieve this, the accumulated findings on sustainable land management will be collected together in an "Activating Land Management” toolkit.

Re-use chains in water and energy infrastructures in shrinking regions: Using the example of the model regions, Elbe-Elster (Brandenburg) and Wittenberg (Saxony-Anhalt)

Contact:

Dr. Susanne Schön, +49(0)30 34 34 74 52
Helke Wendt-Schwarzburg, +49(0)30 34 34 74 46

client:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Project partner:

Klimaschutzregion Elbe-Elster c/o Bürgermeister Stadt Uebigau-Wahrenbrück, Bioenergieregion Wittenberg c/o Landkreis Wittenberg

Science partner:

BTU Cottbus, Hochschule Anhalt (FH), TU Berlin

location:

Landkreis Wittenberg, Landkreis Elbe-Elster

duration:

2010 – 2013