Transition lab Hjälmaren

Project partners:  Hjälmarsamarbetet, Örebro Municipality, Eskilstuna Municipality, Katrineholm Municipality, County Administrative Board of Örebro County, Örebro University, Hjälmarens vattenvårdsförbund, Örebro Airport

Grant: 13,488,673 SEK

Project period: 2025-11-15 to 2028-10-14

Contact person: Frans Prenkert, Örebro University

Linked to tasks: Reduce negative impacts on the water ecosystem, prevent and reduce the spread of hazardous substances, adapt society to flooding and drought

Purpose and goals

The project aims to establish a geographical transition lab around Lake Hjälmaren. The transition lab adopts a landscape and systems perspective on the lake’s complex challenges, both today and in the future. This is done by building organizational capacity in participating organizations, ensuring local policy coherence, and developing a shared working method for long-term water environment work at both the strategic and operational levels. Specifically, the focus of the transition lab is to develop and implement new techniques to reduce the spread of micropollutants, and to develop and implement methods at the landscape level to manage both high and low water flows to protect residential areas, agricultural land, drinking water supply, and ecosystems. The transition lab also aims to build, disseminate, and implement the knowledge and systems perspective required to handle Hjälmaren’s complex challenges.

Expected effects and results

The project is expected to result in an established transition lab and implemented techniques to reduce the spread of micropollutants, along with a cross-municipal and cross-county working method for handling the high and low flows that are predicted to become more common due to climate change. Hjälmaren’s challenges are complex and integrated, which is why the project builds and implements knowledge and a systems perspective within the participating organizations. The project thus contributes in several ways to the program’s mission, doing so with a landscape perspective where, for example, policy development is a prerequisite for managing low and high flows, which in turn is a prerequisite for, among other things, counteracting collapsing ecosystems due to the accelerating warming of Hjälmaren, which also affects the drinking water supply, and so on.

Planned structure and implementation

The transition lab is formed within the framework of the coordination organization, the Hjälmaren Collaboration. An operational transition team with representatives from the member organizations will be created to build and implement the necessary systems perspective, based on results from the other work packages. Each work package in the project has its own timelines and implementation plans, which vary depending on the specific issue.

The text on this page was formulated by the project group itself. The content has not been reviewed by our editors.