UNESCO, IAH-CFH, IHP International Conference on ‘Groundwater, key to the Sustainable Development Goals’

From the 26th to the 28th of May 2021, the UNESCO, IAH-CFH, IHP International Conference on ‘Groundwater, key to the Sustainable Development Goals’ will take place in Paris. 

The conference will examine the overall relationships between water-related SDGs, their stakeholders and groundwater, and share knowledge, experiences, findings and good practices on groundwater resources (GWR) in sustainable development trajectories.

Ambitions of the conference:

To constitute a meeting point to favor exchanges between the different national and international stakeholders in the fields of water and sustainable development:

– Decision-makers, from the international level to local authorities, like Water Agencies, basin authorities and local structures for management and protection of groundwater;

– NGOs, civil society, local communities, farmers, water and sanitation companies, industries;

– Funding agencies and donors;

– Groundwater resource specialists: scientists, national and local authorities, planning authorities, engineering firms and consultants.

Registration will open on January 2021. 

SIWI’s World Water Week event will go digital in 2020

This year, the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) will host the event World Water Week in a virtual format from 24 to 28 August 2020 under the name World Water Week at Home. 

WWWeek At Home was born as an umbrella under which organizations can host virtual adaptations of their World Water Week-approved sessions. The programme is already available here.

For nearly 30 years, SIWI has organized World Water Week focused on transforming global water challenges. It is foremost a collaborative learning experience, providing a forum and opportunity to facilitate the exchange of views, experiences, and practices between the scientific, business, policy and civil society.

Click here to learn more and register.

IWRA will host online conference on groundwater and climate change

The International Water Resources Association (IWRA) will host an online conference under the topic “Addressing Groundwater Resilience under Climate Change” on the 29-30 October 2020. 

The conference will address challenges brought by climate change and priorities to manage resiliently groundwater resources. The conference aims to promote the sharing and exchange of scientific and policy knowledge on the links between an increased resilience of groundwater resources and climate change for the sustainable governance, use and management of these resources in all regions of the world.

Click here to visit the conference website. 

European Commission adopts revised Surface Water Watch List

This week, the revised Surface Water Watch List was adopted by the European Commission. The latest version of the watch list contains three substances already present since 2018 (the insecticide metaflumizone and the antibiotics amoxicillin and ciprofloxacin) and has several substances added in 2020, including:

1. The sulfonamide antibiotic sulfamethoxazole and the diaminopyrimidine antibiotic trimethoprim;
2. The antidepressant venlafaxine and its metabolite O-desmethylvenlafaxine;
3. A group of three azole pharmaceuticals (clotrimazole, fluconazole and miconazole); and
4. Seven azole pesticides (imazalil, ipconazole, metconazole, penconazole, prochloraz, tebuconazole, tetraconazole), and the fungicides famoxadone and dimoxystrobin.

Based on the mechanism introduced by the Directive 2013/39/EU, the watch list aims to better assess risks from chemicals found in surface water. Member states have to monitor these substances at least once per year for up to four years.

The Commission’s proposal for the 2020 update was based on work undertaken by the Joint Research Centre.

The European Court of Auditors assesses how sustainable is the use of water in agriculture

The European Court of Auditors is assessing the impact of the EU’s agricultural policy on sustainable water use as at least one-quarter of all freshwater abstracted in the EU is used on farmland. 

Agricultural activity not only affects the quantity and availability of freshwater resources, but it also affects water quality, for instance through fertiliser and pesticide pollution. The audit will be useful as the EU moves forward with its reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP).

The CAP plays an important role in water sustainability. It offers some tools that can help reduce the pressures on water resources, but it may also, for example, finance irrigation infrastructure. This audit of the impact of the EU’s agricultural policy on the sustainable use of water is being launched with a view to contributing to the future CAP. 

The auditors will assess whether EU policies promote sustainable water use in agriculture. In particular, they will examine whether:

1. the European Commission has included the principles of sustainable water use in the CAP rules;
2. the EU Member States apply those principles and provide incentives for sustainable water use in agriculture.

Water Europe has recently held a session during the Water Innovation Europe 2020 conference that addressed ‘A Water-Smart Society to Provide Healthy Food for EU Citizens’. Click here to discover the key points from the session. 

Watch below our dedicated video that introduced the session. 

Freshwater ecosystems tool enables SDG reporting to continue despite COVID-19

According to the UN Environment, the tool Freshwater Ecosystems Explorer developed by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in partnership with Google and the European Commission’s (EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC), facilitate national reporting on freshwater ecosystems and allow governments to continue to meet their national environmental reporting obligations and stay on track to preserve and restore a healthy environment.

Freshwater Ecosystems Explorer is a free and easy-to-use data platform providing up-to-date, high-resolution geospatial data showing the extent to which freshwater ecosystems change over time. The site contains unique, first-of-a-kind water datasets through which users can visualize dynamic changes to permanent and seasonal surface water; reservoirs; lake water quality; wetlands and mangroves.

Because decisions on freshwater are made by varying levels of government (national and sub-national government authorities), data on the freshwater ecosystems explorer can also be visualized at different scales, from the national scale right down to small individual watersheds and lakes.

UNEP is the UN entity mandated to support countries with monitoring and reporting SDG indicator 6.6.1, which tracks changes to water-related ecosystems over time. In 2017, following UNEP’s request to all member states to provide national SDG indicator 6.6.1 data for the first time, this global data drive process revealed that less than 20% of member states were able to report on the changing extent of their freshwater ecosystems. The freshwater ecosystem explorer was conceived in response to this gap.

The EC-JRC’s earth observation and environmental monitoring scientists had an integral role in designing and developing the indicators and interface of UNEP’s new freshwater ecosystem explorer. They provided a synopsis of water-related ecosystems using the Global Surface Water Explorer, a JRC-Google Earth Engine tool that maps and analyses the dynamics of global surface waters over time, and the Global Reservoir dataset, which provides maximum reservoir area for major reservoirs at a global scale. The new tool also uses the Copernicus Global Land Service’s Lake Water Quality product, which was fine-tuned to meet the SDG requirements.

Click here for more information.

SUEZ signs agreement to acquire new technology to address water treatment challenges

SUEZ has signed an agreement to purchase the Reverse Osmosis (RO) membrane portfolio from specialty chemical company LANXESS. The membrane will become part of the company’s Water Technologies & Solutions portfolio and further enhances the business’ ability to help customers address water treatment challenges.

The acquisition falls in line with SUEZ’s strategy to grow and invest in the industrial water market. The deal will allow the company to deploy complementary RO technology in adjacent and growing sectors, and to increase global production of membranes.

The agreement to purchase the Lanxess’s RO product line includes the membranes, raw materials, and production facility located in Bitterfeld, Germany, along with the expected transition of its channel distributors and production employees directly connected to the membrane line. With this acquisition, SUEZ will:

1. Scale up its RO product solutions to meet broader and emerging water treatment needs,
2. Expand its international RO membrane production capabilities and expertise to help meet growing global demand, and
3. Grow its customer base with new channel partner distributor relationships.

The deal is expected to be completed in the coming months, following consultation with the relevant workers’ council.

Click here for more information. 

New EU-India cooperation in the areas of resource efficiency and circular economy

During the EU-India Summit held digitally this month, Europe and India established a Joint Declaration to intensify EU-India cooperation in the areas of resource efficiency and circular economy. 

The declaration sets an India-EU Resource Efficiency and Circular Economy Partnership bringing together representatives of relevant stakeholders from both sides, including governments, businesses (including start-ups), academia and research institutes.

The Partnership should support and strengthen dialogue and cooperation on resource efficiency and circular economy, facilitate the design, planning, implementation, promotion and dissemination of policies, strategies, technologies, business solutions and financing mechanisms on these issues, as well as enhance cooperation on research and innovation.

European Parliament announces new committee on Artificial Intelligence and digitalisation

The European Parliament announced the set up of three special committees, a committee of inquiry for 12 months and a permanent subcommittee. They include:

  A special committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age

 A subcommittee on Tax matters

 A special committee on beating cancer

 A special committee on Foreign interference in all Democratic processes in the EU, including disinformation

 A committee of inquiry on the protection of animals during transport.

Water Europe welcomes particularly the special committee on Artificial intelligence. Water infrastructures are vital for European society and economy despite the absence of this recognition by the EU in the directive 2008/114/EC. 

As stressed in the Water Europe Vision, Digital Water, including artificial intelligence, can contribute to survey the infrastructure and achieve full transparency on water quality and quantity. Paired with adequate adaptation and training to new skills, it can also support stringent compliance monitoring, faster penalisation and optimise infrastructure use to maximize resilience, easing off the necessity for renovation investments and reducing the pressure on water resources, as addressed in the EU Water Alliance manifesto. 

HYDROUSA project gathered over 100 participants at webinar

The HYDROUSA Project Webinar that took place on the 9 July received more than 100 attendees from all over Europe. The virtual seminar was organized by the CWP, ICRA, the National Technical University Athens and Impact Hub Athens, to disseminate the advances on the development of the HYDROUSA project.

Sara Gabarron, Project Manager of the CWP opened the session and presented the agenda of the webinar as well as the first speaker, the Project Coordinator Simos Malamis who kicked off the webinar by presenting the Hydrousa Project concept and its objectives. 

Giulia Cipolletta and Francesco Fatone from the UNIVPM followed explaining the legislation, barriers and opportunities for decentralized communities, leaving the floor to Patrik Karlsson from Alchemia-nova Greece to present the valorisation of alternative water resources from rainwater/Seawater.

Next, insights on the implementation of nature-based solutions to reclaim water were given by Fabio Masi from IRIDRA. After him, Óscar Prado from AERIS presented the opportunities to recover energy from wastewater. Tarek El Arabi from the Helipolis University explained the nutrient recycling: Fertigation of an agroforestry field, followed by Zisis Tsiropoulos who presented the digitalization of HYDROUSA services. 

The last presentation was given by Dimitris Kokkinakis from Impact Hub Athens on how to Spread the Word: A Community of water allies, before ending the webinar with an interesting Q&A section moderated by Gianluigi Buttiglieri, researcher at ICRA, where all speakers contributed to solving the assistant’s queries.

Visit HYDROUSA’s website to learn more about the project.