Representatives of the NATURE, Nat4Wat, and M-AD-NESS projects receive R&D project awards for water management and treatment. | CWP
The NATURE project, led by researcher Víctor Matamoros, has been awarded first prize among the R&D projects for sustainable water management presented during the 7th edition of the Water Innovation Day, organized by the Catalan Water Partnership (CWP). This event aims to promote the transfer of knowledge and results from leading R&D projects carried out by companies and research centres in Catalonia’s water sector. The event brought together over 160 attendees and featured the presentation of 15 R&D projects, establishing itself as a key meeting point for professionals in the field.
The European NATURE project focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of nature-based solutions in reducing aquatic pollutants such as antibiotics, pathogens, and antimicrobial resistance. According to the analysis conducted at the Can Cabanyes wetland and the Besòs River (Barcelona), surface flow and subsurface flow constructed wetlands removed an average of 88% and 69% of present antibiotics, respectively, significantly outperforming conventional technologies that combine sand filtration, ultraviolet (UV) light disinfection, and chlorination, which remove between 36% and 39%. Regarding antibiotic resistance genes, conventional treatment systems already provided a 99% reduction; however, the wetlands demonstrated the ability to eliminate up to 99.9% in both evaluated seasonal cycles (summer and winter).
“The results of the NATURE project represent a promising advance in environmental protection and public health,” says Víctor Matamoros, researcher at IDAEA and project leader. “They highlight the importance of implementing more sustainable technologies in the wastewater sector.”
Can Cabanyes wetland, Barcelona. | IDAEA-CSIC
IDAEA is part of the Catalan Water Partnership cluster, whose mission is to promote collaboration between companies, technology centres, and institutions to address the current challenges in the water sector. This was emphasized by Jordi Cros Herrero, president of the CWP, during the opening of the VII Water Innovation Day, where he also highlighted the 28 R&D and innovation projects in which CWP has participated or coordinated during 2024, ten of them with European funding or supported by the AEI grant program of the Spanish Ministry of Industry and Tourism and IRC programs from ACCIÓ.
The NATURE project is composed of a consortium of six institutions: IDAEA-CSIC (Spain), Kilian Water (Denmark), Aarhus University (Denmark), KIT (Germany), CIIMAR (Portugal), and ENI-ABT (Mali). It has been funded by the European Commission under the ERA-NET AquaticPollutants program, within the framework of the Water, Oceans, and AMR JPIs joint initiatives.
