Water for life – LIFE for water
A Conference of the LIFE Programme
The LIFE Unit of the European Commission is organising a conference in Brussels on 14 - 15 October 2009 to facilitate the dissemination of results of LIFE water projects. The event, entitled: ‘Water for life - LIFE for water' will involve over 100 invited participants, including LIFE project beneficiaries, national and international water authorities, NGOs, the media and other relevant stakeholders.
(At the end of this page you will find links to programme, background information and registration form)
As part of the EU’s Water Framework Directive (WFD), which was adopted in December 2000, the EC has set an ambitious target of achieving good ecological status for all Europe’s rivers by 2015. The main tool to achieve WDF objectives are the river basin management plans, which should start being published in 2009. In the case of river basins encompassing more than one country, the WFD requires Member States to coordinate their plans.
As LIFE projects on water are helping to implement the WDF, the results represent valuable knowledge and information. The LIFE water conference will attempt to share this among the relevant stakeholders and to ensure that the lessons feed into the future implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (adopted in 2008).
The LIFE Water Conference will concentrate its attention on four main water issues:
While the topics of the sessions B1 and B2 came from the risks/pressures identified during the River Basin analysis, the topics of the sessions A1 and A2 are currently issues of major concern.
The LIFE projects which will be present during the conference will highlight best practices, innovative solutions and ongoing challenges in all four areas and throughout Europe in order to facilitate the identification of results of interest for EU policy, replication and exchange of good practices in water protection.
The main objective of the LIFE water conference: ‘Water for life – LIFE for water’ is to disseminate the results of LIFE water projects to a wide audience. Moreover, the LIFE projects which will be present during the conference will highlight best practices, innovative solutions and ongoing challenges in all four areas and throughout Europe in order to facilitate the identification of results with interest for EU policy, replication and exchange of good practices in water protection.
Each project will be presented in 15 minutes with a further 5 minutes for questions and discussions.
Each session will focus on specific objective and will try to achieve the outcomes set in the background information section.
The project presentations will highlight: innovation, how do we use these innovations for water protection, how can we transfer best practices and innovation and what more is needed?
The panellists will focus their speeches on: what are the water policy needs, what is needed to achieve policy targets and where are the gaps?
The wrap up of each session will consider the lessons learned from LIFE water projects implementation and what gaps should be addressed by future projects?
The outcomes of the conference will also be used by the LIFE and Water Units of DG Environment to disseminate LIFE experience to the water community and formulate future projects priorities of the LIFE programme.
For more information please go the Conference Programme and background information.
For more information please contact:
Adriana Craciun
Life INF&TCY Coordinator
Astrale GEIE
adriana.craciun@astrale.org
Tel.: +32 2 211 03 80
