FWC WATER NEXUS- Support to the Commission's work on the water and agriculture NEXUS - ENV.C1/2016/FRA/0014
The requested services are support, advice and analysis on scientific, socio-economic and technical issues related to agriculture and water policy and implementation practices in the 28 EU countries. It is split in three tasks :
1-Identification of investment needs and combination of funds that would help MS address agriculture pressures to allow for the achievement of good status of water bodies.
2- Policy implementation: Enhancement of the contribution of existing CAP cross-compliance and Rural Development measures to achieve good water status, and non-compliance analysis with the Water Framework Directive.
3- Preparation and delivery of workshops to engage agriculture and EU water policy makers and stakeholders to contribute to addressing the governance, policy implementation, funding and knowledge challenges.
The International Office for Water was in charge of task 1. OIEau provided two experts in EU water and agriculture policy in order:
- To frame the methodology;
- To collect data on the EU28 Member States investment needs in agriculture through a questionnaire ;
- To analyse the data, the existing gaps and the limits to achieving WFD results
- To provide an overview of the scale of the investment needs for the 3 main pressures and
- To identify important environmental safeguards
The main deliverables consisted in :
- An elementary excel database of EU28 MS answers for statistical and qualitative analyses;
- A review of complementary sources of information.
- A report with recommendations in order to achieve better results at river basin level including the most relevant investment, prioritization of investments towards innovative solutions, demonstration projects to bridge the gap between the lab and the farmyard, and the type of financial support.