Horizon Water: Managed Aquifer Recharge for Farms
Funds two €6M projects that store wet-season water underground so farms can draw on it when drought hits.
Droughts in the EU keep getting longer, bigger and more frequent, and farms feel it first. One way to fight back is storing water underground during wet periods, in the same aquifers farms already draw from when it’s dry — called managed aquifer recharge, or MAR. Done right, it cuts how much water farms have to pull straight from rivers and groundwater during a drought, without wrecking the aquife…
Extending, improving and customising managed aquifer recharge (MAR) techniques for farms, river basins and catchments across representative EU agricultural and climate conditions — plus a method for picking where MAR actually works, and a monitoring system that tracks its impact on groundwater quality, quantity, associated water ecosystems and dependent terrestrial ecosystems. Proposals also have to weigh MAR’s effect on drinking water and pair it with engineered or Nature-based Solutions that cut runoff and soil erosion and build landscape climate resilience, then cost it out and design real business models — payment schemes, nature, carbon or water credits — that pay farmers or land managers for hosting a system. Those business models have to be proven with at least 2 case studies in different pedoclimatic zones, plus a governance model that fits different EU regions’ own conditions.
Sign up free to see the funding breakdown
Sign up free to see the industries in scope
Sign up free to see the full eligibility
Sign up free to see how to apply
Sign up free to see what you submit
Sign up free to see how they score you
Sign up free to see the timeline
Sign up free to see where teams trip up