Water JPI Showcase Campaign

The Water JPI is acting since more than 10 years as a facilitator of cooperation between countries on water research through the coordination and funding of collaborative projects. The international cooperation dimension of the Water JPI is reflected by the continuous efforts of partners to integrate new partners to its general governance structure or to participate in some joint activities. That is the case of the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology or the Tunisian Institute for Agricultural Research and Higher Education, which participated to the launch and funding of the WaterWorks2017 call.

As a reminder, WaterWorks2017pooled resources from 23 participating research programme owners / managers of 19 countries to implement a Joint Transnational Call (the WaterWorks2017 call) for research proposals, with EU co- funding, in the area of sustainable management of water resources to reconcile water supply and demand, both in terms of quantity and quality, and in terms of space and time. It covered the following sub-themes of the Water JPI’s SRIA:

• Enabling Sustainable Management of Water Resources;
• Strengthening Socio-economic Approaches to Water Management.

Indeed, this EraNet Cofund funded18 international projects, all of them gathering entities from at least three partner countries (final booklet available here).

In addition to the call, WaterWorks2017 included other activities aimed at expanding the Water JPI’s international cooperation portfolio.

Thus, WaterWorks2017’s partners have also contributed to the shaping of the international water agenda. Indeed, in 5 years, WaterWorks2017’s partners participated and/ or contributed to numerous conferences and Fora, despite of the Covid pandemics, such as the World Water Forum 2018 in Brazil, the Cairo Water Week in 2021, the World Water Forum held in Senegal in 2022, the Water Innovation Europe in 2022, the EcoMondo Conference in 2022 and 2023, the 5^th Asian Europe Meeting in 2022, and the India-EU Water Forum in 2022.

Participation to these events allowed the Water JPI and WaterWorks2017 to valorise and share the work done by the funded scientific projects teams during the lifetime of the EraNet, and to promote a dialogue between partners of WaterWorks2017 and the Water JPI with policymakers, end-users, citizens and the scientific community worldwide.

All the key lessons and recommendations from WaterWorks2017 will be also put at the service of the Water4All Partnership, which is currently developing its strategy on international cooperation. As an observing partner to Water4All, the Water JPI is contributing to this strategic document.

Read Other articles:

Lessons learned from the Pilot Call: a review

Closing the Water Cycle Gap: Achievements of WaterWorks2017

Water JPI: Sharing a Decade of Expertise for Sustainable Futures

Water4All & Water JPI: what is the difference?

A brief overview of the different WaterJPI calls

The main water subjects treated by Water JPI

What’s New for 2024?

As part of the additional activities of the WaterWorks2017, which recently came to an end, partners carried out an analysis of the socioeconomic, technological, environmental and political impacts of the Water JPI’s Pilot Call.

The Pilot Call is the first common call launched by the Water JPI in 2013. This call, aimed to enable multi-national, collaborative research, development and innovation projects was on the topic “Emerging water contaminants – anthropogenic pollutants and pathogens”. Three specific challenges within the Pilot Call were:

1. Identification and prevention of emerging freshwater contaminants;
2. Control, mitigation and methods for treatments and removal;
3. Impact on ecosystems services and human health

Seven projects were funded (to read more on the funded projects click here).

From a scientific and technological point of view, funded projects have contributed to:

• Developing analytical techniques for groups of substances in order to detect and prevent biological risks;
• Understanding and predicting the environmental behaviour and effects of by-products, pollutants and pathogens, including their environmental effects;
• Developing strategies to reduce pollutants;
• Improving the performance of water systems.

The knowledge produced by projects has been presented in numerous conferences and has been the object of media news. All these dissemination activities have enhanced the visibility of the Water JPI. Needless to say, that all these projects have a key social role in progressing towards the protection of humans’ life, health and assets.

Some of the projects funded have as well important economic implications. New improved methods for the treatment of wastewater and monitoring should generate new business opportunities and the optimisation of financial resources. Amongst other results, it should be highlighted the publication of the policy brief. This was the first policy brief produced by the Water JPI.

The writing of a policy brief under the scope of the Pilot calls’ funded projects was decided very early (during the mid-term evaluation meeting of the Pilot calls projects), in order to prepare an effective way to inform about the projects’ results and their expected impacts for the relevant policymakers involved in water management. This Policy Brief gathered recommendations based on the latest scientific results from the funded projects under the Water JPI Pilot Call.

The work to be conducted by the Water4All Partnership over the next two years will provide a better understanding of the long-term impacts of the projects funded by the Pilot Call. The results of this analysis will be published as soon as they become available.

Read Other articles:

Closing the Water Cycle Gap: Achievements of WaterWorks2017

Water JPI: Sharing a Decade of Expertise for Sustainable Futures

Water4All & Water JPI: what is the difference?

A brief overview of the different WaterJPI calls

The main water subjects treated by Water JPI

What’s New for 2024?

Newsletter N.1 2024

The WaterWorks2017 project came to an end in December 2023. This project, initiated by Water JPI partners and co-funded by the European Commission, addressed the challenge of “Closing the Water Cycle Gap – Sustainable Management of Water Resources” (Theme 5 of the Water JPI’ SRIA 2.0) in order to identify innovative solutions to manage imbalances between water demands and the supply capacity of the natural system. Amongst other activities, WaterWorks2017 pooled resources from participating funding agencies to implement a joint call for proposals. Eighteen projects were selected for funding. These projects cover different areas including the management of surface and groundwater in urban and agricultural areas, pollution removal approaches in drinking water, governance and economics.

The Water JPI’s team will offer in successive articles detailed information on the main results achieved by funded projects. This month we wish to focus on the political relevance of WaterWorks2017.

Through the implementation of different activities and the funding of research and innovation, WaterWorks2017 has strived to contribute to the overall objective of European water policy: “To ensure access to good quality water in sufficient quantity for all Europeans, economic sectors and the environment, and to ensure the good status of all water bodies across Europe. The priority is to move towards a water-efficient and water-saving economy” (Water scarcity and droughts, European Commission). More specifically, the work performed by WaterWorks2017 should support the following pieces of legislation/ frameworks:

• The Water Framework Directive, which promotes sustainable water use through the protection of water resources and the mitigation of the effects of droughts.
• The 8th Environment Action Programme, which calls for the transition towards a climate-neutral and resource-efficient economy.
• The European Green Deal.  
• The 2021 European Strategy on Adaptation to climate change.
• The 2020 Circular Economy Action Plan.
• The European Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive.
• The European Drinking Water Directive.
• The European Floods Directive (25/2018).
• The Regulation on minimum requirements for water reuse for agricultural irrigation.
• The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs).

The Water JPI is fully engaged to the wide dissemination and valorisation of project results. To this end, partners will implement an action plan leading ultimately to a full consideration of research findings by the policy community and the market. Amongst others, a new Water JPI Conference is planned in 2025 (more information on this and other activities will be soon communicated).

Read Other articles:

Water JPI: Sharing a Decade of Expertise for Sustainable Futures

Water4All & Water JPI: what is the difference?

A brief overview of the different WaterJPI calls

The main water subjects treated by Water JPI

What’s New for 2024?

The WaterWorks2017 ERANET, co-funded by the European Commission, came to its end on the 31^st December 2023.

This was the end of some very interesting work on strategies for filling the water availability – water demand gap. As part of the ERANET, a call for proposals was launched in 2018. Based on the topic “Closing the water cycle gap – sustainable management of water resources”, this call funded 18 projects, covering a wide range of disciplines (from social and economic sciences to nature sciences), for a total amount of over 15.2€ millions.

A brochure summing up key results of projects and expected impacts will be available soon.

The AquaticPollutants ERANET will continue its activities and some very interesting events will be held in 2024. Let’s highlight the European RoadShow of the project, which will allow the wide dissemination and valorisation of results (the European RoadShow will be followed by another one in South Africa in 2025). The roadshows will also strengthen international cooperation, establish partnerships to facilitate the uptake of the project results and where applicable advocate for regional partnerships to pilot and extend some of the projects in member countries.

BiodivRestore – KnowledgeHub

The healthier our ecosystems are, the healthier the planet - and its people. Taking this into account, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2021–2030 the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, for the benefit of people and nature. On this basis, and in collaboration with Biodiversa, the Water JPI will implement in 2024 a Knowledge Hub on Nature restoration (the BiodivRestore Knowledge Hub).

This BiodivRestore knowledge hub will contribute to the integration and sharing of knowledge, research and technological excellence to support countries in the development and implementation of their National Restoration Plans, to help ensure they can reach the targets set out in the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 and Global Biodiversity Framework. It will also improve communication and networking between researchers and stakeholders to enhance research impact and knowledge transfer towards policy and society, and feed the European research & innovation strategy on this topic.

The Knowledge Hub will seek strong synergies with the Biodiversa+ and Water4all Partnerships, as well as relevant organisations (such as the European Environment Agency; IUCN; environmental NGOs) and networks (such as Society of Ecological Restoration; EGU Biodiversity Task Force etc.). Finally, the Knowledge Hub will provide a hands-on mechanism to feed the Science Service (i.e. the scientific pillar of the Knowledge Centre on Biodiversity) for issues dealing with nature restoration/nature-based solutions, and provide concrete inputs to relevant Missions (most notably the Soil Mission, and Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change).

SD WISHEES

Gathering several members of the Water JPI, the SD-WISHEES project! will pursue activities to enhance strategic coordination and cross-sector collaboration between national Research and Innovation (R&I) funding members, researchers, innovators and a wide variety of stakeholders. This enhanced collaboration should translate into more efficient strategies for the protection of cultural heritage and beyond in response to more and more frequent and severe hydroclimatic extreme events such as droughts and floods.

Some activities planned for 2024 include:

• Roadmapping of the strategic R&I needs and priorities in the field of hydroclimatic extreme events and cultural heritage.
• Completion of actions leading to the launch of a TAP action at the beginning of 2025.
• Collaboration with other neighbouring initiatives, notably the Water4All Partnership, the JPI Cultural Heritage and the upcoming Partnership on Cultural Heritage.
• Identification of main obstacles for transnational cooperation.

Last but not least, the Water JPI team will keep on posting information on latest activities. Keep a look at our website, where as part of a new showcase campaign we will publish one article per month. Have a look at the articles we will prepare on the results of WaterWorks2017 and the IC4WATER (completed at the end of 2022) funded projects, and the progress of the SD-WISHEES.

And do not forget to check out our social media!

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Newsletter Subcription

Past Newsletters

Read Other articles:

Closing the Water Cycle Gap: Achievements of WaterWorks2017

The main water subjects treated by Water JPI

A brief overview of the different WaterJPI calls

Water4All & Water JPI: what is the difference?

Water JPI: Sharing a Decade of Expertise for Sustainable Futures

Since its launch, the Water JPI has addressed many themes under the water field.

The Water JPI's main goal is tackling the challenge of 'Achieving sustainable water systems for a sustainable economy in Europe and abroad.' To meet this goal, the Water JPI has implemented research projects in the water field from complementary fields as biology, ecology, economy, human health or technologies.

Throughout its duration, the Water JPI spearheaded impactful joint calls, each addressing diverse themes and critical subjects in the realm of water research and innovation.
The 2013 Pilot Call, focused on Emerging Water Contaminants, saw the allocation of resources to tackle novel challenges and understand potential risks.
Subsequently, the 2015 Joint Call concentrated on Developing Technological Solutions, emphasizing services for water distribution and measurement, wastewater treatment and reuse, desalination, floods, and droughts. The joint call aimed at Improving Water Use Efficiency and Reducing Soil and Water Pollution for Sustainable Agriculture, emphasizing the intersection of water management and agricultural sustainability.
2017 Joint Call centred around Water Resource Management in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), aligning research efforts with global sustainability targets.
In 2018, the Joint Call addressed Closing the Water Cycle Gap, emphasizing sustainable water resources management to bridge critical gaps.
The 2020 Joint Call, in collaboration with JPI Oceans and JPIAMR, delved into Risks Posed to Human Health and the Environment by Pollutants and Pathogens in Water Resources, acknowledging the interconnectedness of water quality and public health.
Lastly, the 2020-2021 Joint Call with Biodiversa emphasized Conservation and Restoration of Degraded Ecosystems and Biodiversity, highlighting the crucial role of aquatic systems in broader ecosystem health.
These joint calls underscore the Water JPI's commitment to fostering collaborative research initiatives that span a spectrum of water-related challenges and contribute to sustainable solutions on both local and global scales.

It was crucial to consider various areas of expertise instead of concentrating on a particular field. The goal was to foster connections between complementary disciplines, allowing them to mutually enhance each other and contribute to the development of innovative technologies, the generation of knowledge, and the provision of holistic policy insights.

Given the intrinsic multidisciplinary of water challenges, the Water JPI has enabled collaboration with other partnering initiatives. Some of Water JPI calls have been co-implemented with other joint programming initiatives, such as the water and agriculture call in 2016 in collaboration with the JPI FACCE, BiodivRestore with the Era-Net Biodiversa, and AquaticPollutants in cooperation with the JPI AMR and JPI Oceans.

In addition to the different calls, which have allowed the funding of more than a hundred research projects, the Water JPI has launched a wide range of additional activities contributing to the coordination of research agendas and the alignment of thematic priorities. A few examples include knowledge hubs or networks of experts, clusters of projects funded at the national level (Thematic Annual Programming actions, TAPs), and impact assessments.

Read Other articles:

Closing the Water Cycle Gap: Achievements of WaterWorks2017

What’s New for 2024?

A brief overview of the different WaterJPI calls

Water4All & Water JPI: what is the difference?

Water JPI: Sharing a Decade of Expertise for Sustainable Futures

Since its creation in 2011 different calls have been launched. A quick overview of them is provided below.

The first one, in 2013, the Pilot Call, had for topic “Emerging water contaminants - anthropogenic pollutants and pathogens” (all documents related to this call can be found  here). This call funded seven projects for a total budget of 9€ million.

The second joint call, WaterWorks2014, was launched in March 2015, and was funded by the EC under Horizon 2020. This Era-Net cofund had for aims to tackle European water challenges through the development of transnational and transdisciplinary research and innovation actions in the area of “Developing Technological Solutions and Services for Water Systems”. Topics of the WaterWorks2014:

1. Water treatment, reuse, recycling and desalination.
2. Water resources management.

Mitigating impacts of extreme events (floods and droughts) at catchment scale. 16 projects were funded under this call.

In February 2016, a third joint call was launched, named WaterWorks2015. This Era-Net cofund aimed to support research on the sustainable management of water resources in agriculture, forestry and freshwater aquaculture sectors, through the funding of 21 projects with a budget of over 17€ million. Supported by 22 countries and co funded by the EC, the scope of this call was around the following challenges:

• Increasing the efficiency and resilience of water uses
• Monitoring and reducing soil and water pollution

Integrating social and economic dimensions into the sustainable management and governance of water resources

The success of those calls led Water JPI members to launch a fourth one, named IC4Water, in February 2019. The focus of this call was on water resource management in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), around two challenges:

1. Multiple pressure effects on ecosystems and ecosystem services as well as effective mitigation – adaptation tools and assessments for implementing the water related targets of the UN SDGs
2. Developing accessible solutions for clean water management to address UN SDG6 targets and associated SDGs.

Eight projects were funded as a result of this call.

The fifth call, calledWaterWorks2017, was launched in 2018. Based on the topic “Closing the water cycle gap – sustainable management of water resources”, this call funded 18 projects, covering a wide range of disciplines (from social and economic sciences to nature sciences), for a total amount of over 15.2€ millions.

In 2020, an unprecedented collaboration between the three JPIs, Water, Oceans and Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) and the European Commission, funded 18 projects, on the risks posed to human health and the environment by pollutants and pathogens present in water resources. This call, AquaticPollutants, was awarded with 20€ million.

Finally, the Era-Net Biodiversa and Water JPI launched in October 2020 a joint call called BiodivRestore on the “Conservation and restoration of degraded ecosystems and their biodiversity, including a focus on aquatic systems”. 22 projects were funded.

At this time, WaterWorks2017 is closuring soon, in December 2023, but AquaticPollutants and BiodivRestore are still ongoing!

We will keep you posted on the main results obtained by all these funded projects.

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Past Newsletters

As you may know, a new initiative to tackle global water challenges has taken shape in 2022, the European partnership Water4All – water security for the planet (www.water4all-partnership.eu). This partnership is co-funded by the European Union in the framework of Horizon Europe and built on the experience and expertise of the Water JPI.

Thanks to more than 10 years of expertise, the Water JPI gained a lot of experience in the management of a large consortium, in the launch of calls for research and innovation projects and for the valorisation of scientific knowledge in the field of water. The Water JPI was thus involved in the setting-up of the Water4All work programme and actively participated in the development of the Water4All’s Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (Water4All SRIA, 2022), a reference document setting guiding principles and identifying policy-relevant research priorities for the future. The Water JPI experience enabled the new partnership to avoid some problems encountered by Water JPI in its early days, and to organise itself to think bigger! 

A continuity between the activities implemented over the past years within the Water JPI is ensured thanks to the sharing of best available practices, lessons learned and recommendations for the development of the Water4All’s communication, dissemination and exploitation strategy. The work initiated by the Water JPI for the development of tools and online platforms for the collection and access of open data or for promoting the access to Research and Infrastructures will also be used as a baseline by Water4All for better communicating water-related knowledge and data. Similarly, the outcomes of the mapping exercise carried out in the framework of the Water JPI and its strategy for international cooperation for 2022-2027 (Water JPI International Cooperation Strategy[1], 2022) were also considered as reference documents to feed the International Cooperation Strategy of the Watert4All partnership.  

If both initiatives are supporting water research and innovation, Water4All is more ambitious in order to achieve the overall goal of securing water for all. Whereas the Water JPI brings together 20-member countries, represented mainly by research and innovation funders, Water4All is gathering 31-member countries from Europe and beyond and is encompassing more than 80 partners from the whole water Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) chain, including representatives from academia, research and innovation funders, water management authorities and water associations.  

To meet its ambition, the Water4All’s scope of action is larger than the one of the Water JPI, including multi-national and cross-sectoral activities from physical and biological sciences to human and social sciences, and adopting a systemic approach from the source to the sea. In the light of Water JPI actions fostering the alignment of national and regional water-related programmes and strengthening water RDI collaboration at international level, Water4All will be supporting and promoting the demonstration and access to market of innovative solutions, providing tools for water management, fostering capacity development of policy-makers, stakeholders and citizens, and designing and implementing approaches to enable participatory development of innovation. 

To summarize, Water4All has a larger consortium and an ambition that goes well beyond fundamental research. Partners come from different types of organisations including national research and innovation funders, researchers, end users, policy makers, associations, networks and economics actors. The articulation of those two initiatives and their complementarities will, thanks to the Water JPI Action Plan aimed at valorising the results of research projects, enable Water4All to take over the funding of research projects. This complementarity will allow the development of new joint activities and instruments to ultimately meet the objectives of the Green Deal and the Sustainable Development Goals.
 

[1] http://www.waterjpi.eu/international-cooperation/international-cooperation-strategy

http://www.waterjpi.eu/international-cooperation/cooperation-beyond-europe-1

The Water Joint Programming Initiative (Water JPI), launched in 2010, is an inter-governmental structure created to tackle water challenges in Europe and beyond. It has developed in over more than ten years a vast amount of expertise to help mitigate the effects of anthropic impacts on water.

Supported by the EU, the Water JPI consortium gathers national funding agencies from different countries to support scientific research in the field of freshwater. Its main goal is to boost, share and communicate scientific research and findings to ultimately improve water management and quality.

Since its launch, the Water JPI has organised a wide variety of activities (joint calls, thematic and exploratory workshops, etc). It has created a new way to tackle water challenges by enabling the coordination of national research and innovation agendas by using available human and financial resources more efficiently. The work led by the Water JPI has aimed to define actions that should be adopted by society at large and policy-makers in particular.

The data, tests and experiences accumulated in the long run are of high scientific value to direct decisions for policy making and inform stakeholders. All the knowledge produced by Water JPI’s activities has the objective to put policy actions in the right track. Stakeholders have always played a key role in Water JPI’s activities by supporting the design and implementation of appropriate solutions (co-design and co-implementation principles). For this reason, the Water JPI actively fosters the participation of citizens, as well as the industrial and economic sectors, in shaping its initiatives.

Water, a central issue

Freshwater is a central issue for human society and environmental fields. All forms of life on earth rely on water. This invaluable resource is more and more under stress: scarcity is increasing, as demand is growing for its use. Pollution is another stress factor due to human habits and activities and climate change also worsens the situation.

Everyone should be aware of the value of this important resource and how we all need to preserve it for life quality and future well-being of our society.

Water JPI Communication Campaign

During the “10 Years JPIs Conference”, held in Austria in 2018, JPI representatives underlined the need for reinforced communication in order to showcase the results obtained to date and to inform the European research community of upcoming and past activities. Later discussions between Water JPI’s Chair and vice-Chair highlighted the need for the Water JPI to implement an effective communication campaign using the available resources at the Secretariat and Coordination team, hosted by ANR. The present campaign comes as a response to this latent need.

This communication has for objectives to:

• Widely communicate all Water JPI’s activities, including those undertaken within the framework of supporting projects, Horizon Europe projects, and the Task Force “Horizon Europe and Alignment”.
• Disseminate and contribute to the sustainability of Water JPI’s results and its key player role in the shaping of European water policies and the provision of solutions with a potential market uptake.
• Inform the European research and innovation community, policy-makers and society in general of the Water JPI achievements and running activities.

After more than 10 years of functioning, the Water JPI has gathered and created a great amount of knowledge in the scientific fresh water field.

For the coming months, we will give you information on different topics, such as the importance of funding scientific research for fresh water as a central subject – with interviews to different funded project coordinators, policy makers, citizens or members of the Water JPI – and about the necessity of cooperation at different levels on research in the water field. We will publish regular content on our website and on our social media profiles (LinkedIn group and Twitter).