Making society an active participant in water adaptation to global change

Objective

Sustainable water management under climate change is an urgent challenge for the Euro-Mediterranean region. Future climate change projections estimate an increase in water scarcity and droughts in the region, causing substantial socioeconomic losses and environmental impacts.
In this context, efforts are needed to strengthen public participation and embed a sense of responsibility within the society concerning water management and adaptation towards these threats. The combination of improved awareness, mutual learning processes and shared responsibility of the civil society and stakeholders are key to ensuring successful adaptation strategies and their implementation, leading to increased resilience of the social-ecological system of a river basin.

BEWATER addresses the above challenges by promoting dialogue and collaboration between science and society. The project aims at launching a transition from a technologically-focused river basin management approach to a stakeholder driven planning and management process that allows a pro active response to emerging climatic changes and related pressures. Based on a bottom-up approach, the multidirectional and multi-sectoral knowledge transfer throughout the project will raise awareness, feed ownership and ultimately lead to effective adaptation policies.

BEWATER proposes, with tests in case study river basins across the Mediterranean, a process of building resilience based on the engagement of a wide group of stakeholders, with the goal of achieving a sustainable and adaptive management at river basin scale. It is an iterative process of mutual learning between society and science, which identifies water management options and works out adaptation plans. It leads to innovation as a result of effective integration of local experience and research.

The results will be translated into generic adaptation guidelines that can be adopted in other river basins and results will be disseminated in a targeted and strategic way.

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: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences hydrology drainage basins
• social sciences political sciences political policies civil society
• natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences climatology climatic changes
• engineering and technology environmental engineering natural resources management water management

Programme(s)

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

• FP7-SIS - Specific Programme "Capacities": Science in society

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.

• SiS.2013.1.2-1 - Mobilisation and Mutual Learning (MML) Action Plans: mainstreaming Science in Society actions in research

Call for proposal

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

FP7-SCIENCE-IN-SOCIETY-2013-1
See other projects for this call

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.

CSA-SA - Support actions

Coordinator

Participants (12)