Nordic Lakes, Päijänne, Mjösa, Ladoga and Peipsi have always been routes of culture and trade. During the history they have served, for instance, as Vikings' routes for the trade and battles and as routes for spreading religion. Living has been concentrating on extraction of nature and its resources: wood processing, transport, water consuming industries and tourism. This is mainly because of their rich nature, bright water, forests, flora and fauna. In addition to historical similarities, these regions have much in common also today: they are not developing as fast as the metropolitan areas of their countries.Big Lakes II project promotes lake resources for prosperous life. The Project is a continuation of a project "Big Lakes - a Cooperation Network on Sustainable Development". Its purpose was to develop sustainable ways to manage lake tourism. The focus of this current project is far broader: it aims at sustainable spatial development, leans on regional culture and nature in this process as well as searches economic opportunities based on the sustainable use of water resources.Participating lakes can learn from each other by searching, developing and sharing best practices on how to take care and use the lakes' heritage values. The vision of the project is that through very concrete actions in each of the countries, the participants get a feel for sustainable development which would flavoured with Nordic similarities and tailored to fit into local peculiarities. These visions would be penetrated into municipal and regional planning processes and into the minds of the general public. A common international BL strategy is formulated.A number of activities support the economical, social and environmental sustainability of the lake regions. Water based business can be multiple: research, tourism, mobile technology, cultural events, construction and improvement of wells in the rural area etc, . By gathering new data, research and inventories will be achieved new opportunities for sustainable development and business opportunities. The project has already managed to identify economically feasible activities, which could provide concrete business opportunities for local people. The project has also managed to promote welfare by promoting the importance of physical activity and as a best practice and example serves Bicycle Route in Norway –Mjöstråkk – combining also C & N heritage spots alongside.The project is based on four Working packages:• Identification and Definition of Cultural and Natural Heritage Factors• Building the concept of Nordic Big Lakes as sources of Cultural and Natural Heritage, incl. small scale investments• Development of Integrated Strategies• Branding, Networking and Dissemination Achievements: The project consortium has created a common strategy and gathered own best practices, which can be found www.biglakes.net – Strategy and Best practices.Decision makers at different levels have been exposed and encouraged to lean on information about cultural and natural heritage (C&N). Numerous stakeholders have been activated to look at the lakes from C&N perspective. This process was facilitated through organising regional lake forums, small and bigger ones. The model of forums has been benchmarked between regions and each country/lake area has selected own name for the own forum: Päijänne-Foorumi in Finland, Mjösa Arena in Norway and Peipsi Council across Estonia and Russia. The improvement of the tourism infrastructure in Norway has been combined with promotion of public health and marketing of the valuable C & N sites. A number of fact sheets (around 100 objects) have been produced to disseminate the C & N sites values around the lake Mjösa, accompanied with a bicycle map covering Mjösa region.The east - west networks start to mature in a very productive way. The sister projects (under Phare CBC) at the shores of the lake Peipsi (EST & RUS) and lake Ladoga (RUS) have been strongly integrated into the project consortium and new joint actions, ideas and cooperation possibilities were continued. Thanks to the effective co-operation with the Russian local stakeholders in lake Ladoga have participated in the training on eco-tourism and sustainable concepts, a wastewater treatment system was built, the overall landscape planning in the Regional Environmental Education Centre in Zaostrovie in Lodeynoje Pole district has been improved, a manual on eco-tourism for the Leningrad region was issued, nine routes for C & N tours were developed (a booklet was published) and the project has led to the development of a meaningful relationships between east and west in spatial planning and C & N heritage sectors. The Norwegian partnership has managed to establish a co-operation between Hedmark College (NOR) and St. Petersburg State University in the field of trout research.Finally, the brand and the logo Big Lakes has been planted into the minds of all key players in the regions and outside the project consortium and its’ own stakeholders. Big Lakes Wireless has managed to brand mobile technology for dissemination of municipalities’ and entrepreneurs’ services in lake Päijänne. Now the service of two municipalities is achievable through mobile phone and 64 entrepreneurs have joined in the BLW marketing system.