The final goal of the EUROWET project is to integrate the substantial multidisciplinary European research in wetlands to help attain the sustainable management of the water cycle. This will be achieved by the translation of state-of-the art science developed at both national and European levels, into practical guidance for end-users. This will be achieved by a comprehensive review, expert assessment and a focussed dissemination strategy. There is considerable scientific knowledge and technical experience gained in diverse aspects of wetland science and management including hydrology, biogeochemistry, ecology restoration, socio-economic and policy analysis. However the results of research and management experience are still too fragmentary and not sufficiently orientated to problem-solving or simply inadequately framed to be effectively transferred to, or used by, stakeholders and policy-makers. Simultaneously the general outcome of the scientific research has been increased awareness of the significance of wetlands in delivering goods and services important for human welfare including quality of life, biodiversity conservation and maintenance or enhancement of environment quality. Despite this wetlands continue to be degraded and lost throughout Europe without adequate consideration of the wider benefits to be achieved from this management. The new Water Framework Directive (WFD) promotes a unique opportunity to redress this problem by means of the holistic, integrated approach to water management. There is currently in preparation horizontal guidance on Wetlands as part of the Common Implementation Strategy (CIS) process. There is however work still to be done on providing more specific scientific and technical guidance on the effective implementation of the Directive with respect to wetlands. This is particularly the case in relation to Integrated River Management, the CIS cluster within which wetlands are being considered in the WFD.
CULT-STRAT will establish a scientific reference for developing strategies for policy and decision-makers on European and national levels within the CAFE Programme and for heritage managers for strategic decisions at local level. It will do this through a choice of material indicators and pollution threshold levels based on best available scientific data including deterioration models, spatial distribution and mapping of pollutants and of stock of materials at risk, cost estimates, comparison studies off different conservation approaches. Damage caused to objects of cultural heritage belongs to the most serious among the detrimental effects of anthropogenic air pollutants as it endangers a vital part of the European identity. There is therefore an urgent need to include the impact of pollutants on cultural heritage alongside the human health and parts of the ecosystem that are already concerned in the EU Directives on urban air quality. This is especially relevant for the CAFE (Clean Air for Europe) programme of the Commission and the Community interventions through the 'Culture 2000' framework programme and the structural funds. The overall aim is to identify material indicators and threshold levels of pollutants to be used for development of strategies for sustainable maintenance and preventive conservation of European cultural heritage and air quality policy to reduce damage. The models will permit ranking of the effects of pollutants on corrosion and soiling of materials. The air pollution models will be related to local fluxes, including indoor concentrations. The stock of cultural heritage materials at risk in selected areas (Paris, Rome, Florence, Prague, Madrid, and Berlin) will be used for assessment and mapping of areas where cultural heritage objects are endangered. Prime Contractor: Korrosionsinstitutet Sci AB, R&D Department Atmospheric Corrosion, Stockholm SE.
Aiming at solution and prevention of actual and future environmental problems, EU policy resulted in many Directives concerning water and soil. Moreover, the Commission of the European Communities composed a paper 'Toward a Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection' and set up a tight time schedule. Despite of above mentioned legislative efforts an effective EU-wide approach to the problem of site remediation and groundwater contamination is hindered by a number of problems described by the CLARINET Working Group on Co-ordination of RTD on an European level: There is little synergy at EU level between national and EU RTD programmes, leading to a serious overlap of research projects and parallel expenditures and less efficient use of limited resources. The broad dissemination of project results through national RTD programmes at an European level is very modest and fragmented. percent These are the starting points of SNOWMAN-Era-Net: What do we HAVE? The consortium will produce a sound overview on programmes and their contents and management in the field specified. A database containing all relevant information will be produced and analysed. What do we WANT? A Vision Paper will define the goal of European research activities in this specific field of environmental research. How can we GET co-operation NOW? ? Specification of next steps, short- and medium-term, preparing ground in order to reach the overall goal of ERANET, i.e. to implement and conduct a research programme on bi-/multilateral level throughout Europe. Suitable tools (like uniform evaluation criteria etc.) will be developed in Working group meetings and collected within a summary report. Knowledge dissemination will be supported by a close linkage with the EUGRIS project. On this portal, all findings produced within SNOWMAN will be published and made available to a wider community. On interpersonal level, networking with the European Soil Policy Working Group or Cost activities will be maintained.
Urban regions in the EU face increasing but uncertain flood risks due to urbanization and the effects of climate change. In European (a.o. the Flood Risk Directive) and in national and regional policies, attempts are made to diversify and align different Flood Risk Strategies (FRSs). In our proposal, five such strategies are distinguished: risk prevention; flood defense; mitigation; preparation; and recovery. We assume that vulnerable urban agglomerations will be more resilient if multiple FRSs are applied simultaneously, linked together and aligned. At the same time, the application of a diverse cluster of FRSs has to be appropriate, i.e. attuned to the physical and social context. The latter asks for innovative Flood Risk Governance Arrangements (FRGAs). In the proposed program, insights from governance and legal scholars will be integrated and combined, leading to policy design principles for FRGAs as well as concrete recommendations for policy and law at the level of the EU, its member states, regional authorities, and public-private partnerships. Across different EU countries and regions, we expect to identify different mixes of FRSs. We will analyze, explain and evaluate the emergence and dominance of the FRGAs through which these FRSs are institutionally embedded. For this, a comparative analysis of FRGAs in six EU member states will be carried out. This analysis will reveal good practices, provide understanding of the resilience of FRSs as well as their appropriateness in different physical, social and legal contexts. The design principles thus derived, will be brought together in a design-oriented framework for ex-ante evaluation of FRGAs. As part of the program, various target group specific knowledge dissemination activities will be carried out, aimed at regional stakeholders, high level policymakers and EU officers. To this end, Grontmij, a consultancy company, and CEPRI (The European centre for flood risk prevention) have been included in the consortium, apart from universities in the six EU member states.'
The objective of CEFES is to perform a focused assessment and evaluation of data in EU forest monitoring networks to provide policy relevant information on: - The interactive effects of climate change with air quality change (nitrogen (N) deposition and ozone (O3) exposure) on European forest ecosystems and their services (wood production, C sequestration, biodiversity and the protective functions of forests in view of an adequate soil and water quality). - The way in which adaptive and sustainable forest management strategies can be used to mitigate climate and air quality change effects on forest structures and functions and keep forests sustainable in the long-term. The evaluations will be based on available data from forest monitoring systems at the European scale (mainly available data at ICP forests Level II and Level I plots with additional data derived in the LIFE+ FUTMON project) in combination with available databases on air quality and meteorology, and key data assessed in CEFES itself. More specifically, the objectives are to evaluate the above mentioned datasets and to assess the climate (precipitation, temperature) and air quality (N and acid deposition, O3) pressures and their effects on: - the protective functions of soil and water resources in terms of changes in (i) hydrological budgets and ground water recharge and (ii) soil acidification and N leaching to ground water and surface water; - forest growth, carbon (C) sequestration and the related CO2 exchange; - tree species diversity and ground vegetation, in terms of its nature conservation value; - forest ecosystem health, phenology and regeneration potential. Building on to these evaluations, CEFES aims to identify regionally specific adaptive management strategies in order to mitigate the impact of climate change on forest structures and functions. Considering the LIFE+ objectives, the project aims to contribute specifically to monitoring and evaluation of environmental policy and legislation by: - Evaluation of climate change scenarios, as described by the IPCC scenarios, and air quality change scenarios, as determined by policies related to (i) the Air Quality Framework Directive and related Daughter Directives of the EU and (ii) the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution. - Provision of policy relevant information on effects of climate change in relation to air quality change on forest ecosystems in Europe and giving recommendations for adaptation measures at the forest management level. - Provision of data that contributes to the reporting needs (specifically as defined in the criteria and indicators of the Ministerial Conferences of Protection of Forest Ecosystems, MCPFE) and obligations at national and European level.
The aim of SIPE is to promote and increase the use of research results in support of Standards (related to the compartments air, water, soil and waste) to stakeholders from RTD, Standardisation bodies, policy and enterprises/SMEs. A dedicated www-based Standards Information Portal (SIPE-RTD) will be developed and implemented. Easy transfer of information is facilitated by an input module (SIPIS) and a document repository. An Interfacing Group, consisting of stakeholders representatives will be invited to comment on the initial concept and to steer the development of the portal. They shall be instrumental to ensure that SIPE-RTD develops into a fit-for-use and sustainable entity. EC FP-funded research projects in support of Standards and their results, and Standards related to the mentioned sectors will be listed. EC Directives in these areas and their policy tasks will be collated. The same set of keywords will be used to describe all data sets. This pool of (Standards related) keywords will be interlinked by algorithms into a Categorisation scheme of keywords. This scheme will be the basis for the interactions within and between the stakeholder communities, and be used for gap analyses. Information on RTD projects (and their results), information on Standards and Directives will be entered into SIPE-RTD. Short descriptions in non-scientific language will be entered together with web-links. To maximise dissemination to all stakeholders the target audiences will be defined and their networks/professional organisations will be mapped. Dissemination will be two-way: inform all stakeholders on the activities of the SIPE project and inform all on the benefits of SIPE-RTD as an important tool in communication between different Standards communities. The Interfacing Group and a Stakeholder Network will test and validate SIPE-RTD and support dissemination to their respective audiences.
The Marine Strategy Framework Directive is designed to deliver Good Environmental Status (GES) in EU marine waters by 2020. This Directive requires that Member States (MS) with marine territories put in place measures to achieve and maintain GES within a defined timeframe and according to eleven key descriptors of environmental status. However, there is a significant knowledge deficit which may hinder full implementation of the MSFD and the achievement of GES in EU waters.STAGES (Science and Technology Advancing Governance on Good Environmental Status) project is designed to directly address this knowledge deficit. The project has to overarching goals: i) to synthezise per major MSFD themes the information from research projects and ii) to develop a platform to ensure that the knowledge generated through European science and technology can be channeled to a broad range of relevant end users, to inform and facilitate implementation of the MSFD and the achievement of GES. To achieve this, STAGES will target a number of critical gaps in the knowledge transfer process. Firstly, STAGES will identify and synthesize relevant existing EU research results and make them available in a usable format for decision and policy making authorities. Through comprehensive scientific foresight targeted at MSFD knowledge gaps, STAGES will identify needs for futher research. STAGES will also develop innovative solutions to achieve an effective collaboration between the broad range of stakeholders necessary to support MSDF implementation, including policy and governance, science, industry and civil society. Moreover, the role and input of MSFD stakeholders will be central to the activities of the project and to the proposals for a science policy interface which will be delivered by the project. The partnership has been constructed to include a combination of EU/international organizations which can represent a broad constituency of MSFD stakeholders, and national organizations with responsibility to support research and provide advice on MSFD implementation at MS level.
The adoption of the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive 91/271/EEC imposes the sewage sludge to be subsequently treated so it is expected by 2005 to increase twofold in comparison whit 1992. However, classical incineration to treat this vast amount of sludge must be no longer accepted from an environmental point of view. In addition, the Sewage Sludge Directive 86/278/EEC regulates the uses and properties of stabilised sludge for being either recycled or disposed. Both directives drive specific actions in two complementary ways. Firstly, a deep knowledge of current sludge treatment, such as mesophilic, thermophilic or autothermophilic processes, must be promoted to solve that problem in the UE ambit, taking in account the particular considerations of each treatment facility. In second place, the development of new processes must be supported to open new alternatives that could valorise that waste.The proposal aims at developing strategies for the disposal and reuse of waste sludge. The scope envisages to develop several processes for reducing both amount and toxicity of sludge, with simultaneous transformation into green energy vectors such as methane or hydrogen. In outline, mesophilic and mainly thermophilic and autothermophilic conditions will be deeply explored as classical alternatives for sludge stabilisation, assuring sanitary conditions of the treated sludge. Also, valuable materials will be obtained from sludge, such as activated carbons, which will be used in conventional adsorption processes and in innovative advanced oxidation processes.The main outcomes expected at the end of the projects are guidelines for technology selection in agreement with the geographic, economic and technical characteristics of the sewage plants, demonstration of the feasibility of new applications for the sewage sludge, manufacturing of activated carbon from sludge sewage as innovative recycling of sludge waste, and a deep understanding of the methods involved. Prime Contractor: Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain.
Many current water-related RTD projects have already established operational links with practitioners, in several catchments / river basins, which allow the needs of policymakers to be taken into account. However, experience has shown that this interrelationship is not as efficient as it could / should be. Often, RTD results are not easily available to policy oriented implementer (policymakers) and, vice versa, research scientists may lack insight in the needs of policymakers. This project proposes a number of concrete actions to bridge these gaps in communication by developing and implementing a science-policy interface, focusing on setting up a mechanism to enhance the use of RTD results in the Water Framework Directive (WFD) implementation. As a first action, existing science-policy links will be investigated. RTD and LIFE projects that are of direct relevance for the implementation of the WFD will be identified and analysed. The results of these projects will be extracted, translated and synthesised in a way that can efficiently feed the WFD implementation. Secondly, an information system (WISE-RTD Web Portal) will be further developed to cater for an efficient and easy to use tool for dissemination as well as retrieval of RTD results. The Web Portal will be tested in 4 selected river basins to better tune the product to the needs of WFD stakeholders, policymakers and scientists. In parallel, the Web Portal will be disseminated to WFD stakeholders. This dissemination will focus on how to better access and use the RTD results and practical experiences. As third action, this science-policy interfacing of WFD related topics will be extended to non-EU countries taking into account their specific needs. An assessment of recent practices and needs of non-EU countries, together with an in-depth analysis of the operational needs in two Mediterranean pilot river basins, will allow to prepare recommendations for an efficient transfer of knowledge. Prime Contactor; Hydroscan NV; Leuven; Belgium.
The scientific evidence base to support credible risk assessment for the design of appropriate microbial standards for bathing waters is insufficient. This is particularly true for Mediterranean waters, for new member states and for effects associated with exposure to toxic algal products. This is a pressing problem as Directive 76/160/EEC is currently in the process of amendment by the EU. It is therefore intended to address three questions, namely: a. What is the nature and level of the risk and how does exposure affect risk? b. What level of protection is afforded by the threshold values in Directive 76/160/EEC and CEC (2004)? c. How do the risks vary between fresh and marine waters and does the 1:2 ratio of the faecal indicator threshold values in coastal waters vs freshwaters ensure a comparable level of protection? In the first 12 months, this proposal will (i) complete a literature review and meta-analysis of current epidemiological data derived principally from UK and German studies, (ii) define data gaps restricting the application of credible health-evidence-based policy to bathing water standards outside these regions and (iii) design and agree a suitable research protocol for filling these data gaps. The second twelve months of research (from month 13 to 24) will (iv) implement this protocol and the project will deliver (v) a scientific report of the findings and detailed policy interpretation before the project end, i.e. 36 months following commencement. Prime Contractor: University Wales, University College Aberystwyth; Aberystwyth; Aberystwyth.
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