For a cleaner Mediterranean by the year 2020This initiative is funded by the European Commission through DG EuropeAid.
For a cleaner Mediterranean by the year 2020For a cleaner Mediterranean by the year 2020A three-day training course on wastewater treatment and reuse took place in Tunis, Tunisia (18-20 May, 2011) within the framework of the Horizon 2020 Capacity Building/MEP project. With 40 participants from all over the country, the course succeeded in engaging the interest of various professionals with the overarching objective of promoting an integrated approach to drinking water consumption, wastewater management and reuse and related technologies, and thus contributing to the ultimate goal of depolluting the Mediterranean Sea.
The Horizon 2020 study on a Hot Spot inventory for the West Balkans and Turkey, which started in September 2010, has already begun to produce results. Missions have taken place to all countries involved, and all the projects listed in the 2005 National Action Plans have been updated. 85% of the Hot Spots in the field of solid waste and waste water have already secured funding and are in various stages of progress, with some already completed.
Rabat, Morocco was the latest stop for the Horizon 2020 Capacity Building/MEP project where a three-day training course on wastewater treatment and reuse took place last week (11-13 May 2011). With 32 participants from all over the country, the course succeeded in engaging experienced professionals in a wider effort with the overarching objective to promote an integrated approach of drinking water consumption, wastewater management and the related technologies.
Project support is speeding up as two feasibility studies are currently being prepared in Lebanon and Tunisia, while another three potential investment projects are finalising the pre-feasibility study stage in Egypt. At the same time, there is ongoing dialogue in the partner countries on priority investment projects seeking for funding.
Another Horizon 2020 capacity building course was held in Larnaca, Cyprus last week (11-12 May 2011) dedicated to sharing and learning from Integrated Sustainable Waste Management (ISWM) experiences from eleven Mediterranean countries. The EU funded meeting was hosted just outside Larnaca city and benefited moral and financial support from the Cypriot Government. The two-day training acted as a “learning through teaching and sharing” platform for its 18 participants to consolidate their know-how, present their own challenges and experiences and be informed of other good practices and applications of ISWM in the region. Experiences in all five aspects of ISWM were covered: the social, environmental, operational, institutional, financial, and legislative aspects.
Two consecutive training courses on wastewater treatment and reuse within the framework of the Horizon 2020 Capacity Building/MEP project, were organized by the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education and the Arab Countries Water Utilities Association (ACWUA). The three-day courses, held in Jordan (6-8 March 2011) and Lebanon (9-11 March 2011) are part of a Mediterranean-wide capacity building effort. The courses, which involved extensive hands-on training, aimed to introduce wastewater reuse through integrated water resources management while strengthening knowledge on technologies and technology selection. Attended by fifty participants in total, the courses targeted experienced wastewater managers and decision-makers mainly sourced from the central government and local authorities, water and sewage associations and relevant research institutions.
More than 40 experts from the Southern Mediterranean and the West Balkans gathered for the second meeting of the RMR Sub Group in Copenhagen in March. The meeting reviewed the most recent developments of the H2020 Initiative, the results of the ENPI-SEIS consultation meeting in November 2010, and also of the research projects and activities in the Mediterranean. Organised around breakout groups, the sub-group discussed ways to develop a regular reporting process to monitor environmental progress on "depolluting the Mediterranean" with a particular focus on the three H2020 priority issues of urban waste water, municipal waste and industrial emissions. By the end of the meeting a collective view of the next steps to be taken had been developed.
The Mediterranean sea is heavily burdened with litter. A three-day training course on how to effectively deal with marine litter took place in Istanbul, Turkey (7-9 March 2011) within the framework of the Horizon 2020 Capacity Building/MEP project. Around thirty professionals mainly from coastal local and regional authorities of the country and NGOs took part in the course, which was organized by the Association of Cities and Regions for Recycling and Sustainable Resource Management (ACR+) with the support of Waste.
