Integrated water resources management (IWRM) is a prerequisite for compliance with the EU’s Water Framework Directive. IWRM.Net project will map existing national and regional research programmes and bring together their managers with a view to the creation of common, demand-driven research strategies and programmes to improve greatly the effectiveness of Europe’s IWRM research. Expected outcome of IWRM.Net is an exchange network ready to support synergies between national and regional research programmes and a better valorisation of their outcomes at practitioners level; the immediate objective of IWRM.Net is to check the feasibility of this initiative, and to prepare a 5-year project, which could be supported through the ERA-Net.
The project will focus on issues like the existing barriers for enhanced co-operation between local programmes, the exchanges of information on programme management practices, the development of joint activities, the improvement of dissemination practices, as well as the short-term identified needs, and the prospective approach for long-term needs. The objective of the Specific Support Action (SSA) IWRM.Net is to check the feasibility and to prepare a proposal of a ERA-Net project on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) at a European scale (including news members states), from the point of view of the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD); with a further possible openness to other countries (in particular NIS and Africa) within the framework of the European Water Initiative (EUWI).