The River Basin Network Workshop that took place on 26 and 27 January in Zaragoza, Spain, provided an opportunity for representatives of River Basin Authorities to exchange experiences on the implementation of agricultural measures within the context of the Water Framework Directive (WFD).
The workshop was co-organized by Ecologic Institute as part of its activities in the "Comparative Study of Pressures and Measures in the Major River Basin Management Plans." This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the most frequently applied agricultural measures in River Basin Management Plans, feed into the Impact Assessment of the Blueprint to safeguard Europe's Waters, and improve the existing Catalogue of Agricultural Measures. The workshop was hosted by the Ebro River Basin Organisation.
The River Basin Network (RBN) is a technical sub-group of the Expert Group on WFD and Agriculture that was established to exchange practical experiences and share knowledge on good practices in support of the WFD implementation. On the one hand members offer feed-back from the field and on the other hand they gather information for dissemination to all river basin managers, stakeholders and EG members. Through their extensive experiences, the RBN partners are providing valuable information on the effectiveness of agricultural measures in different settings, and thus supporting the Pressures and Measures study.
The workshop focused on the selection of the most important agricultural measures, discussion of preliminary results for different measures, as well as discussion of specific issues such as financing of measures or policies to reduce diffuse pollution from agriculture. Ana Frelih-Larsen and Johanna von der Weppen, Ecologic Institute, facilitated the different discussions together with Nicolas Rouyer, DG Environment and Francesca Somma, JRC. A technical visit with the Ebro River Basin Organisation allowed participants to learn about the Hydrologic Information system and monitoring in the Ebro River Basin.
The Workshop was attended by representatives from 12 river basins as well as 4 stakeholders, representatives from the European Commission, the JRC and consultants.
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