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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
How to Stimulate the Water and Agriculture Nexus?
Author(s)
Rob van der Veeren1, Diederik van der Molen2 and Siep Groen3
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DOI:10.17265/2162-5263/2017.07.003
Affiliation(s)
1. Rijkswaterstaat, Lelystad 8200 AA, The Netherlands
2. Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, The Hague 2500 EX, The Netherlands
3. Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, The Hague 2500 EK, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT
Water
and agriculture are interlinked: water is indispensable for agricultural
production and agricultural production results in emissions of
nutrients and other substances to surfacewater and groundwater. However, not only in physical terms are water
and agriculture interlinked, there are also strong links between water
and agricultural policies. This paper focuses on European National Policies on water and agriculture. Agricultural
practices are primarily regulated by European Agricultural Policies, such as the Nitrate Directive,
Directive 2009/128/EC on sustainable use of pesticides and the Common
Agricultural Policies. The achievement of the objectives for nutrients and
pesticides of European water related policies, such as the Drinking Water Directive
and the Water Framework Directive, depends on agricultural practices. Therefore, for an effective and efficient
implementation of sustainable policies on both agriculture and water, it is
necessary to make sure that the targets and instruments of the two policy areas
are properly aligned. Current practices show that this is not yet the case; so,
there is room for improvement. This paper highlights steps needed to improve
cooperation between these two policy domains and discusses first steps already
taken at the European level. In addition, some examples of Dutch National Initiatives resulting
from a dialogue between farmers and water managers with the aim of combining the objectives of water and agricultural policies and interests are presented.
KEYWORDS
European Policies, agriculture, water.
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