With an overall budget of €14 million, it is expected that these projects will use nearly 1 million m³ of treated wastewater per year for agriculture and domestic purposes.

On March 18th2020, the five ENI CBC Med projects funded under priority B4.1 "Support sustainable initiatives aimed at finding innovative and technological solutions to increase water efficiency and encourage use of non-conventional water supply" had an online meeting for knowing each other, and exchange ideas on how to share results and create synergies, potentially in the context of a thematic cluster. 

The meeting was organized by Dr. Konstantinos Plakas (Centre for Research and Technology Hellas – CERTH), project manager of the AQUACYCLE project, who declares: 

I believe that the first communication between the five ENI CBC projects on water was fruitful and has fulfilled with success its dual scope, first to get to know each other and be informed about the projects funded under the same priority, and secondly to develop a joint view of the thematic cluster and brainstorm ideas and opinions on how to create synergies.

Dr. Konstantinos Plakas

The participation of the other projects was active and involved from Palestine Mr. Monther Hind and Ms. Amal (Palestinian Wastewater Engineers Group – PWEG), for the project MEDISS, who underline the need to work close each other at technical and administrative level (where necessary): “Exchange of ENI CBC Med projects related experiences between the five projects and other projects implemented by the partners as well where synergies are available, exchange of visits between the projects as soon as ENI CBC MED pilot actions are implemented will also give an opportunity to strengthen technical relation and exchange of experience”.

For MENAWARA, Mr. Alberto Carletti explained project’s commitment in providing additional resources by recycling drainage and wastewater, tapping water losses, rationalizing water use practices and setting operational governance models in line with national and international plans, thus he declares that: “It is strategic that our projects work in close synergy by sharing results and best practices to bring to common roundtables involving the largest possible number of stakeholders at the scale of the entire Mediterranean region”.

PROSIM project, presented by the coordinator, Mr. Corrado Paternò Castello (ICU Onlus) stressed the connection with the climate change effects and the need to join contemporary the cross-border and local capacity building: “We propose to produce a common "white paper" or “political document” on non-conventional water use and water use efficiency, collecting the main insights, takeaways and solutions from our respective projects which might be useful for decision makers”.

 

The project NAWAMED was presented by Barbara Sarnari (SVI.MED. Onlus) and Fabio Masi (IRIDRA srl) who stressed the need to affect the decision making at political level, especially in regards to Euro-Mediterranean policies and strategies that are dependent on water. Fabio Masi reminded that “the Water Framework Directive and foreseen EU Directive for wastewater reuse is in its last draft version still not completely favoring the application of a wastewater-food nexus, which should instead being assured considering the valuable nutrients recovery practices, most probably mandatory for the food chain security in the next decades”.

The projects decided thus to collaborate during the next years starting by creating a database of contacts, sharing an online agenda of planned events, promoting periodical brainstorming, knowledge exchanging between project partners that are responsible for technical activities/tasks, organizing working groups on Non-Conventional Water (NCW) use at domestic and agricultural level with the aim to join results in a unique final document and to collaborate organizing the foreseen international events for the next years. 

Together we are stronger!