Water Knowledge Europe 2022: the event for water experts

Water Knowledge Europe 2022, took place in Brussels last October organized by Water Europe, it had 200 participants during the three days of the event and its side-workshops. The event’s main programme took place on 18 October, with speakers from the European Commission guiding the audience through the opportunities for water in the new Horizon Europe Work Programmes 2023-2024 and offering tips on how to shape successful project consortia. Special highlight of the programme was ‘The integration of the gender dimension into R&I’ workshop held at the end of the day that demonstrated how addressing the gender dimension in a project can make a difference in the evaluation of a whole project proposal.

On the morning of the same day, the Water Europe Working Groups hosted their meetings in person for the first time after two years of online meetings. At the meeting of the Working Group on Water and the Sustainable AGRIFOOD system led by BIOAZUL, our colleague Rafael Casielles guided the meeting where the team’s work during the year was reviewed with such important milestones as the publication of the White Paper on the Possible Effects of the Regulation EU 2020/741 on minimum requirements for the reuse of water in the agri-food value chain and strategies for its implementation and the workshop that was organized in June of this year. In addition, there was time to organize the work for the new year and present interesting projects and initiatives for the working group, specifically the following were presented:

• Effect of salts in industrial effluent on crop quality and soil + bacterial evolution in stored municipal wastewater by Charlotte Boeckaert.
• BONEX – Boosting Nexus Framework Implementation in the Mediterranean by Rafael Casielles.
• DigiFRESH – Digital monitoring of fruits and vegetables freshness by Angela Magno.

On the 17th of October the Working Group teams, together with all the other platform ambassadors, had the opportunity to hear updates from all Water Europe programs and pillars and openly discuss their needs and ways forward for the implementation of its mission to build a water-smart society.

Furthermore, within Water Knowledge Europe 2022, a very successful edition of Water Projects Europe dedicated to the ICT4Water Cluster was held. And two other events: the workshop ‘Drinking Water Directive, transposition and beyond’, co-organized with AquaEuropa, and the workshop ‘Governance and financial solutions to address water scarcity’ organized jointly with Climate-KIC.