Water, particularly access to safe drinking water and sanitation remains a worldwide challenge. By 2040, it is estimated that 1 in 4 children will be living in regions of extremely high-water stress because of overuse, population growth, and climate change. One of the regions most affected by these issues is the Global South. An inclusive approach for managing water resources circularly is needed to address the clean water crisis. Here, the expertise from the European Union countries can support the research needs and knowledge gaps from the Global South, while simultaneously leading to an assessment of current challenges and best practises in the Global North. For that, 6 academic institutions, 1 SME and 1 water utility join efforts through NEUTRAL4GS. By implementing co-creation and co-design strategies between partners from the Global South and EU, the project aims to develop and test solutions inspired by nature for urban water management. This includes jointly working with i) different types of urban water (stormwater, greywater and wastewater), as well as with ii) a range of different treatment technologies combining nature-based solutions with supporting technological units (e.g., membranes, nanofiber biomass carriers, graphene-based nanocomposites, lightweight porous media or photocatalysis) that can be innovated for more sustainable or close to nature performance to deliver treated water and water for reuse. Holistic sustainability and economic assessments will guide the development and prioritization of technologies. Thus, NEUTRAL4GS will pioneer innovative solutions in water treatment, ensure social acceptance and adoption of technologies, and generate significant impacts in terms of societal, environmental, and public-health benefits. By garnering awareness and involving the local authorities and local community in the process, NEUTRAL4GS strive to ensure sustainability and long-term success of the project’s outcomes beyond its lifetime.

The overarching objective of FutureLakes is to demonstrate innovative solutions needed to transform lake restoration, integrated into lake management. These aim to significantly improve ecological and chemical status of European lakes, restore biodiversity, recover valuable resources, enhance the services that lakes provide and make society more resilient to climate change. FutureLakes aims to deliver this through an integrated framework for lake protection and restoration that demonstrates a range of technical solutions that include innovations in Nature-based Solutions, Circular Blue Economy Solutions and Biodiversity-focused Solutions. Demonstrating integration of these solutions in operational lake management in six large European lakes (Demo Basins) which will deliver a Blueprint for lake protection and restoration. The FutureLakes Blueprint will incorporate a catalogue of innovations and guidance on the enabling environment needed to turn promising technical innovations from niche measures to become mainstream approaches in lake basin management planning. This includes demonstrating more effective and inclusive collaboration in water governance and showcasing innovations in policy implementation and green financing. FutureLakes will also develop a Roadmap for Upscaling European Lake Restoration in support of the Mission Restore our Ocean and Waters deployment and upscaling phase. Upscaling of measures across Europe will be tested through activities aimed at replicating the FutureLakes approach in three associated regions. FutureLakes will not only contribute to delivering to the three objectives of the Mission (to protect and restore freshwater ecosystems and their biodiversity; to reduce pollution; and to build a sustainable carbon-neutral and circular blue economy) but it includes specific objectives to develop the Mission’s two enablers: creating a European Lakes Digital Innovation Hub and demonstrating innovative approaches to enhancing public engagement.

AWARD recognises the urgency of action due to water scarcity and climate change impacts as well as the need to engage simultaneously the society, the science and the policy into the development of knowledge and strategic water planning. Therefore, AWARD will provide evidence-based solutions to consider AWRs into water supply strategic plans, based on socio-political engagement. The 4 Demo Cases of AWARD are already implementing AWRs (storm water, rainwater and aquifer recharge in Bucharest in Romania as well as in Milano in Italy; water reuse in Cyprus, storm water and rainwater in an industrial park in Santiago di Compostel in Spain). Through the project activities, Demo Cases will consider scaling up their actions taking in account a broader range of AWRs together with conventional water resources for planning future water supply systems at local or regional level using AWARD instruments (Local Water Fora, Digital Platform for decision making, training and guidance). They will address similar issues in a harmonised and coordinated way. Societal awareness to support the decision process on AWRs supply solutions will lead to the recommendations for further use of AWRs encompassing the 4 dimensions of social innovation (Technological, Capacity development, Governance & Policy, Economics & assessment). The AWARD AWRs catalogue will gather the project results and additional solutions which will be benchmarked. The digital platform provided by AWARD will support the exploration of resilient scenarios that will be promoted beyond the scope of the project thanks to dedicated networking activities. AWARD general objective is to provide evidence-based knowledge and lessons learnt on how to effectively integrate affordable, acceptable and reliable AWRs solutions into water supply strategic planning and implementation considering the effect of global changes.

The overall objective of NICE is to widen the availability of enhanced Natural Based Solutions (NBS) to provide circular urban water solutions. NICE will provide key knowledge for the design and implementation of NBS, closing urban water loops. Solutions will make available reusable water for different purposes, in addition to mitigating pollution and runoff and constituting an attractive and integral part of the urban landscape. NICE strategy will be based on the comprehensive study of existing NBS together with the R&D at lab and the validation at Urban Real Labs (11 URLs and 4 Fellow Sites in 5 EU countries and 2 international locations) of innovative NBS covering the urban water cycle (wastewater, greywater, river basins, stormwater & combined sewer overflow).High-potential technologies such as green walls, vegetated rooftops, rain gardens & hybrid subsurface wetlands will be studied and enhanced with especially tailored bioaugmentation strategies, reactive materials & other filling media, novel design & plants, obtaining highly innovative and efficient urban water NBS. The overall approach encompasses the integration of research, citizens, policy and the economic sector to provide the knowledge-base for the integration of the NBS in the real context, covering technical, geographic, social, economic and cultural variety: • Enable the scaling up NBS across EU by development of guidelines, standards and methodologies. A deep review of the existing innovative urban NBS in EU and beyond as well as the creation and implementation of URLs will be carried out. • New business and investment models to maximize the co-effectiveness and co-benefits for the environment, economy and society in urban landscapes of the development and deploy of NBS solutions. • Identify obstacles, barriers and opportunities for the current regulatory framework to support the integration of the NBS in the urban landscape and the use of the effluents for reuse in different uses. • Raising citizen´s awareness and engagement by involving local citizens, authorities, other NBS projects, etc. in the co-creation of the URLs.