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Mitigation of Water Stress through new Approaches to Integrating Management, Technical, Economic and Institutional Instruments

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Relieving water stress

A major EU project, Aquastress, has completed an initiative to tackle water stress. Not just a matter of technological developments, water shortage must be overcome using integrated water management strategies and sound decision making.

Climate Change and Environment icon Climate Change and Environment

Water supply is shrinking with ballooning population size, increase in consumption of water-thirsty production of meat and vegetables, demands from industry and potential effects of global warming. Efficient management of water supplies is therefore becoming increasingly important. Under the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), Aquastress aimed to mitigate water stress problems using a combination of development of interdisciplinary tools and guidance documents. Deliverables would enable a range of stakeholders and actors at different levels of involvement to reduce water stress. Aquastress partners come from both academic and industrial backgrounds with skills ranging from operational management to socioeconomic and environmental domains. A total of 35 partners from 17 countries made up the consortium. The project adopted a case study approach that was stakeholder-driven. The order of operation was divided into three phases – characterisation of reference sites and their water stress problems, identification of solutions, and finally testing of the different solutions according to stakeholder expectations. Available on the project website at http://www.aquastress.net/index.php are the many deliverables produced by Aquastress during the project term. These include documents such as 'Guidance on water stress mitigation', a case study booklet and instruments for water saving in agriculture and industry together with related economics. Moreover, the Aquastress integrated solution support system helps interested parties to understand water stress from an integrated perspective and to find adaptable solutions to water stress. There is also a comprehensive list of factsheets. The Aquastress website is in its entirety freely available to all and provides maximum dissemination of the many project publications. As such, the information is accessible by scientists, stakeholders and the general public to publicise solutions for this global concern.

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