WaterWorks2017

The WaterWorks2017 project “Closing the Water Cycle Gap – Sustainable Management of Water Resources” aims to promote international collaboration enabling sustainable water management. WaterWorks2017 was launched in January 2018. The ERA-NET Cofund project, funded by 19 countries, is supported by the European Commission in the framework of the Horizon 2020 programme during 2018–2022. 23 research funding organisations participate in the project. Participating countries outside Europe include Egypt, South Africa, Israel and Tunisia.

In 2018, a funding call was organised for the WaterWorks2017 project. Its theme was “Closing the water Cycle Gap, Improving Sustainable Water Resources Management”. The funded projects search for new solutions for securing sufficient water resources and quality on a global basis through developing methods for closed water cycles and norms for the requirements in reuse of water. Multidisciplinary research, a social and economic approach and close contact with end-users will be required to achieve this goal. The theme is identified in Water JPI’s strategic research agenda (Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda 2.0 THEME 5), which includes further information on the subject.

The call funded 18 international consortium projects. The total funding amounts to some 15 million euros. The Research Council of Finland's Scientific Council for Biosciences, Health and the Environment funded six Finnish subprojects in four consortia with some 950,000 euros:

1. ATeNaS: To Ally Technology, Nature and Society for integrated urban water management. Furman Eva, Finnish Environment Institute.
2. EviBAN: Evidence based assessment of natural water retention measures for sustainable water management. Molarius Riitta, VTT Oy and Koivusalo Harri, Aalto University.
3. REFORMWATER: Reducing the effects of forest management to inland waters. Pumpanen Jukka (coordinator), University of Eastern Finland and Ojala Anne, University of Helsinki.
4. WATERPEAT: Water management for sustainable use and protection of peatlands. Klöve Björn (coordinator), University of Oulu.