Water is a critical resource for the European society. Beside its main life function, freshwater also provides many other functions essential to our economy. Water challenges cannot be successfully tackled through the isolated effort of individual national research and innovation programmes. This ERA-NET cofund proposal is submitted in the name of the Joint Programming Initiative “Water Challenges for a Changing World”, and aims at contributing to tackle European water challenges through the development of transnational and trans-disciplinary research and innovation actions. WaterWorks2014 addresses the specific challenge of integrating the efforts and Strategic Agendas of many European Water Research and Innovation funding organizations. This ERA-NET cofund will implement a Call for proposals on “research and innovation developing technological solutions and services to support the implementation of EU water policy, in particular for water distribution and measurement, waste water treatment and reuse, desalination, floods and droughts etc.” This Call for proposals will be funded by 18 organizations from 16 countries, and will have a total budget of 15.2 million Euro. This total budget includes a cofund from the European Commission amounting to 5.0 million Euro. WaterWorks2014 will also perform additional activities contributing to Water JPI Strategy and Implementation. Activities contributing to strategy include the development of new versions of the Water JPI Strategic Agenda and the Implementation Plan. Activities contributing to implementation include sharing good practices on Water research and innovation funding and management, exploratory workshops, alignment of on-going projects and the monitoring and final evaluation of Calls without cofunding. WaterWorks2014 will benefit researchers, policy-makers, water authorities, utility operators, industry, farmers, and citizens by developing new solutions to water challenges.

The WaterWorks2015 proposal responds to the Horizon 2020 (H2020) Societal Challenge 5 2015 Call topic Water-3 [2015]: Stepping up EU research and innovation cooperation in the water area. WaterWorks2015 aims at pooling resources from the 32 participating research programme owners / managers of 23 countries to implement a joint call for proposals, with EU co-funding in the area of sustainable water use in agriculture and forestry. It's a collaboration between the Joint Programming Initiatives (JPIs), Water JPI “Water Challenges for a Changing World” and FACCE JPI “Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change”. Achieving a “sustainable water use in agriculture, to increase water use efficiency and reduce soil and water pollution” is at the intersection of the two JPIs, contributing to the implementation of their respective Strategic Research Agendas. WaterWorks2015 includes 9 organisations from associated and third countries in an effort to reinforce international cooperation. Additional Activities will also be carried out to further support the implementation and strategy of the Water JPI. The overall aims include: • Increasing the value of relevant national and EU R&D funding by concerted and joint planning, implementation and evaluation of national research programmes; • Pooling financial resources from participating states towards the definition and implementation of a Co-funded transnational and multi-disciplinary Call for research and innovation proposals. The aim of the Call will be to support the implementation of initiatives and environmental policies, in particular those related to water and agriculture & forestry, as a way to increase water use efficiency and to reduce soil and water pollution; • Overcoming the fragmentation of European water and agriculture/forestry-related research and innovation activities; • Supporting the implementation and the development of the two Joint Programming Initiatives, seeking synergies in overlapping research issues.