Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

HARMONISED NUTRIENT LOAD REDUCTION APPROACHES WITHIN SAFE ECOLOGICAL BOUNDARIES IN CATCHMENTS LOCATED IN NW EU

Project description

New mitigation approach for nutrient reduction in surface waters

Agriculture is a major source of phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) losses to aquatic ecosystems. This is a problem for up to 90 % of the surface waters in northwest Europe and climate change will likely exacerbate the pollution risk. There exists an urgent need to mitigate N and P pollution. This is the aim of the EU-funded NEW-HARMONICA project. In order to meet local and regional environmental targets, it will assess and develop a harmonised systemic approach to generate an effective suite of N and P pollution mitigation measures and indicators in three transboundary river basins in northwest Europe. NEW-HARMONICA will quantify catchment N and P flows, assess their required reductions, and review the governance arrangements to enact reductions.

Objective

In 2015, the ecological status of 75-90% of surface waters in NW Europe was reported to be less than good. Diffuse pollution with nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) from agriculture, together with point sources of N and P pollution from wastewater plants and industry, are a major cause of this failure to achieve good ecological status. Climate change is likely to exacerbate the pollution risk. Clearly, there is a huge challenge to implement effective mitigation measures to reduce nutrient loadings to air and water to meet desired environmental targets against the background of a changing climate. The synergies and tradeoffs between management actions to mitigate climate change and those to mitigate N and P pollution need to be clarified to develop effective local, regional and national policies. Governance arrangements to implement and monitor the necessary actions need to be better integrated, requiring a consistent and coherent set of environmental indicators. The overall objective of NEW-HARMONICA is to assess and co-develop a harmonised systemic approach to prioritizing an effective suite of N and P pollution mitigation measures and indicators to meet local to regional environmental targets. To achieve this objective, an experienced NEW-HARMONICA consortium (4 partners from 3 countries) with complementary expertise, skills and networks will work on 4 N and P-polluted cross-border river basins in NW Europe. All partners are involved in an established NW Europe Policy-Science Working Group (PSWG) who together with local catchment stakeholders play a central role in NEW-HARMONICA. NEW-HARMONICA’s approach is based on a combination of technical assessments, including quantification of N and P flows and load-reduction targets in the study catchments, assessments of governance arrangements, and policy support for the co-development of harmonised environmental policies, based on a strong evidence base and interactions with the PSWG and local stakeholders.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-CSA - HORIZON Coordination and Support Actions

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL6-2021-ZEROPOLLUTION-01

See all projects funded under this call

Coordinator

STICHTING WAGENINGEN RESEARCH
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 600 000,00
Address
DROEVENDAALSESTEEG 4
6708 PB Wageningen
Netherlands

See on map

Region
Oost-Nederland Gelderland Veluwe
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 600 000,00

Participants (1)

Partners (2)

My booklet 0 0