The Mediterranean library of knowledge
Explore the ENI CBC Med Programme's library of deliverables: a comprehensive digital repository of diverse resources tailored for the Mediterranean region. Discover in-depth studies, innovative strategies, and practical tools spanning tools addressing key environmental, economic, and social issues. The library is your go-to source to find valuable knowledge to inspire new collaborative projects driving fair, sustainable and inclusive development across the Mediterranean.
AQUACYCLE My Autobiography - Part 2 Exceeding on expectations
The manuscript “AQUACYCLE My Autobiography” brings an account of the project’s journey through the ‘eyes’ of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system.
It is foremost intended to share the project’s aims and objectives and the progress towards achieving these objectives in an easy-to-understand manner. It is hoped that readers, including society at large will thus gain access into the functioning and purpose of the components that make up the treatment system: an anaerobic digester, one or more constructed wetlands and a solar raceway pond reactor.
Along the project’s journey, AQUACYCLE meets up not only with his ‘creators’, i.e. the research teams in the ENI CBC Med funded project but also with water stakeholders, including farmers from around the Mediterranean Region who are alerting to the dire water situation they are facing and how junior high school students amaze their teachers with their intimate knowledge also of EU regulations concerning treated wastewater reuse and more.
This second tome, published in October 2023 brings the sequel to My Autobiography: Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance, published in February 2022. The latter collects the chapters prior to the construction of a first pilot demonstration unit of the treatment system in Spain, hence the title ‘Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance’.
In this sequel, the reader is informed how the project reached all of its originally foreseen objectives ... and much more ! ... hence the title ‘Exceeding on expectations’.
AQUACYCLE My Autobiography - Part 1 Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance
The manuscript “AQUACYCLE My Autobiography” brings an account of the project’s journey through the ‘eyes’ of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system.
It is foremost intended to share the project’s aims and objectives and the progress towards achieving these objectives in an easy-to-understand manner. It is hoped that readers, including society at large will thus gain access into the functioning and purpose of the components that make up the treatment system: an anaerobic digester, one or more constructed wetlands and a solar raceway pond reactor.
Along the project’s journey, AQUACYCLE meets up not only with his ‘creators’, i.e. the research teams in the ENI CBC Med funded project but also with water stakeholders, including farmers from around the Mediterranean Region who are alerting to the dire water situation they are facing.
This first tome, published in February 2022 collects the chapters prior to the construction of a first pilot demonstration unit of the treatment system in Spain, hence the title ‘Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance’.
AQUACYCLE Capitalization Plan
The AQUACYCLE Capitalization Plan takes stock of the ENI CBC Med funded project’s achievements from two complementary perspectives.
The first chapter collects the Project Legacies – which have been aggregated under no less than 10 different headers – together with the targeted recipients and informs on how public access to these legacies will be ensured beyond the project lifetime. Consequently, further details are presented on each of these respective project legacies.
The second chapter informs about the project’s Capacity Building Achievements, the recipients and the quantified targets reached in terms of the number of Certified APOC users, i.e. the number of persons who received training of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system, abbreviated to APOC system; the number of tertiary degree awards to women in Tunisia for their research related to the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system, and a multitude of women researchers who have been highly instrumental in the successful outcomes of the project’s research activities and for making the outcomes accessible to a wider public, including society at large.
The final, third chapter reiterates on the Project Key Performance Indicators, which sustains the subtitle of the second volume of AQUACYCLE My Autobiography: Exceeding on Expectations.
AQUACYCLE Local communities take an active part in the drawing up of actions plans for the reuse of treated wastewater
how the bottom-up inputs towards the drawing up of action plans for the reuse of treated domestic effluent was achieved through the successful organization of the second series of stakeholder workshops in Lebanon and Tunisia.
The first chapter reiterates on the scope of the Participatory GIS (PGIS) in AQUACYCLE, the motivation for targeting local communities around the pilot demonstration sites of the project’s eco-innovative domestic wastewater treatment system (APOC) and the logistics that were put in place ahead of the workshops. The second chapter informs on how the PGIS practice was introduced to the participants and its outcomes in both Lebanon and Tunisia. An appraisal on the PGIS practice sessions is provided both on the part of the organizers and on the part of the participants who joined in the event in the third chapter. Concluding remarks and a look ahead at the next steps make up the final, fourth chapter.
For the reasons explained in this report, the venue of the workshop in Spain was moved to a farmer community outside the Murcia Region. In lieu of the PGIS practice session, the participants in Spain were shown the actual reuse action plans in the Murcia Region where the reuse of treated effluent continues to be among the highest in Europe.
AQUACYCLE Local action and Investment plans
The Local Action and Investment Plans report informs about the aims and outcomes of the third and final series of stakeholder workshops which was joined mainly by representatives at the local decision-making level, i.e. councillors of municipalities and representatives of Unions of Municipalities in Lebanon, and by policy- and decision-makers at the national level in Tunisia. Organized as a webinar in Spain, the event was joined mainly by wastewater treatment plant operators and technicians, as well as by entities involved in the planning and design of wastewater treatment projects, and research entities on wastewater treatment systems.
While the first chapter reiterates on the aims and scope of the events, the second chapter informs about the preparatory activity of drawing up actions plans with a target of reusing 300.000 cubic meters of treated wastewater per annum. The third chapter informs, briefly, about the presentations that were made at the respective events, while the fourth chapter brings the succinct outcomes from of the discussions and exchange of views that took place. Finally, chapter 5 takes stock of the significant level of attendance and of the wide media coverage that were achieved on the occasion of the third, and final, series of stakeholder workshops.