Developing a joint agenda on Water + Agriculture Claire MCCAMPHILL C1 DG ENV

Summary from SK workshop - 113 participants from public authorities, NGOs, business and research + DG AGRI, ENV, SANTE and JRC. - good quality water is essential for many economic sectors and climate change will further increase pressures on water. - EU water policy has been in place for over 40 years, but in many areas of the EU water has unsustainable quality and quantity - farmers need to be partners in delivering sustainable agriculture and water protection. This requires water and agriculture administrations co-operate.

- thought provoking MS case studies where good practises are in action - break-out discussions on nutrients, pesticides and water use, exploring solutions to these agricultural pressures on water - problems in developing solutions, including the need for further knowledge (due to complexities in the interactions), structural problems (market barriers, land ownership patterns), governance challenges (e.g. authorities not co-operating) and the overall need to understand the best way to ensure behaviour change.

Conclusions - EU legislative framework is largely sufficient, but there are significant problems in delivering its implementation - problems in ensuring plans (RBMPs, NAPs, RDPs) include all relevant elements, are coherent with each other and sufficiently ambitious in delivering toward EU objectives - Barriers to delivering EU legislation include insufficient resources, lack of determination of some actors and that it can be hard to communicate with all the individual farmers whose behaviour interacts with water bodies.

solutions to the challenges include - emphasising the importance of ensuring the core objectives of EU law (i.e. achieving WFD good status) and its enforcement - improving communication (understanding of issues, practical solutions, etc.) - improving collaboration between administrations, including agreement of common objectives. - a critical issue is to provide solutions to farmers that protect or enhance farm incomes and to use markets and consumers to support this together with better targeting of EU funds to support these objectives.

Conclusion - it is important to continue the collaboration between agriculture and water sectors - to improve the joint evidence base for decision making but that should not delay action - Understanding and sharing the good practice examples that exist in MS (focus on particular issues and practical solutions). - EC offer to help through parallel Taskforce work - longer-term: interaction between agriculture and water should inform future reviews of the WFD and the CAP

Issues/themes to be jointly considered for a possible future meeting with senior Agriculture decision makers in first half 2017 1. Investment gaps and needs to help secure compliance? 2. Options to improve governance arrangements and coordination at different levels? 3. Means for compliance assurance (e.g. coordinated planning, enhanced monitoring and controls)? 4. Wider initiatives this agenda could be linked and delivered through - Circular economy, Sustainable development goals, Climate Action? 5. Market development opportunities for a sustainable agriculture?