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Under the mandate of the Common Implementation Strategy (CIS) of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), Ecologic and the Warsaw Agricultural University (WAU) have been commissioned to update the working document “WFD and Agriculture - Analysis of the Pressures and Impacts”. The initial report has been prepared in the frame of the DG RTD project “Common Agricultural Policy meets Water Framework Directive – Opportunities for the future” and presented at the UK Presidency conference on WFD and agriculture in September 2005.

Diffuse pollution from agriculture is one of the biggest challenges to meeting the objectives of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). Considering the effects of the recent CAP reforms on farm practices, there are diverse options and ‘windows of opportunity’ available in both the water and agricultural sectors to link both policy fields. The UK and the European Commission have therefore jointly taken the lead in setting up an EU Strategic Steering Group (SSG) that focuses on the linkages between the WFD and agriculture.

As one of its first steps, the SSG issued a report on the analysis of the pressures and impacts resulting from agriculture, which Ecologic and WAU prepared in the frame or the DG RTD project “CAP & WFD”. The report analyses various agricultural pressures on water bodies and presents the synthesis of inputs from other projects, such as a preliminary analysis of the WFD Article 5 reports by WRc and IRENA, FATE and LARA project results by European Environmental Agency (EEA) and EU Joint Research Centre (JRC).

Under the framework contract on WFD implementation, the Environment Directorate-General of the European Commission has commissioned Ecologic together with WAU to update this working document, taking into account (i) the comments received from the SSG members, (ii) the review of the WFD Article 5 reports of further Member States by WRc, and (iii) the progress made by JRC and EEA in their FATE and LARA projects.