Participatory approaches for fostering non-conventional waters in agriculture: insights from 4 Living Labs in the Mediterranean region

The Mediterranean region is increasingly suffering from water scarcity in summer as a consequence of climate change. Drier conditions call for increased use of irrigation to avoid severe production losses, increasing the pressure on overexploited surface and subsurface water resources. The use of non-conventional waters (NCW) - such as desalination, water reuse and water harvesting - can provide a sustainable alternative to face future climate change conditions. However, the adoption of NCW has several barriers and challenges related to environmental, technical, socio-economic and policy issues. These barriers need to be holistically addressed for effective delivery of NCW solutions. We present the implementation of Living Labs (LL) as tools for testing technical solutions in field conditions, with the involvement of stakeholders in a participatory co-production approach. The four LLs span from Italy, Spain, Egypt and include a transboundary LL between Algeria and Tunisia. Workshops were carried out according to the principles of Responsible Research and Innovation, with  stakeholders’ involvement through a series of methodologies such as World Cafè and SWOT analyses.

The main insights from the workshop concerned inefficient regulations in water-related infrastructures, insufficient funding availability for farmers, groundwater overexploitation, poor water quality and water scarcity as the main challenges. Actions which could contribute to tackle these problems could be farmer education and training, the introduction of drought and salt-tolerant plant cultivars, soil and water conservation practices, community-managed irrigation instead of individual one and better coordination among water management institutions.

Our study provides a unique example of application of the LL approach in rural contexts across the Mediterranean. The same procedure can be applied in any similar contexts to involve stakeholders in water management and allocation and to help them familiarize with the use of NCW. 

This research was carried out within the AG-WaMED project, funded by the Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area Programme (PRIMA), an Art.185 initiative supported and funded under Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Grant Agreement Number No. [Italy: 391 del 20/10/2022, Egypt: ٍSTDF #45878, Tunisia: 0005874-004-18-2022-3, Greece: ΓΓP21-0474657, Spain: PCI2022-132929, Algeria N° 04/PRIMA_section 2/2021].

The content of this abstract reflects the views of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.