The next NAWAMED meeting will be held on the 19 of June 2020 and hosted by the Tunisian partner CERTE - Centre for Water Research and Technologies. The meeting will be held remotely due to the travel restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. During the meeting, the Steering Committee will deal with the administrative issues, while the Technical Board with the project activities.

Because of the delays caused by the Covid-19 impacts, the partners are called to re-schedule the activities to reaching the project objectives. In particular, the partners have to re-think their tasks and set new deadlines for the construction of the 8 pilot installations, which include horizontal flow constructed wetlands, living greenwalls for greywater treatment, and free water flow for stormwater in Italy, Lebanon, Jordan and Tunisia. 

The design of the pilot installations for demonstrating the technical and economic feasibility of these decentralised had slowed down, but the partners are working to set solutions and strategies to cope with the project timeline. Pilots planned in the associated partners’ premises are the most critical ones, which will require major efforts. To minimise the delays, measures such as virtual meetings and exchange of documents among the partners are currently in place and need to be reinforced. Nonetheless, the initial deadlines will be discussed and reviewed. 

The pilot installations will be used, at a later stage of the project implementation, as showcase and training facilities to promote replication and boost the use of decentralised non-conventional water reuse in urban water management practices. In case of excessive delays, the partners might need to develop countermeasures and alternative options to ensure the transfer of know-how to practitioners, and the capacity building of local authorities. Again, this will be discussed during the meeting. 

Finally, the partners will debate the preliminary activities to be developed for building consensus among the key water actors and policy makers for paving the road towards new local and national policies aimed at spreading a more sustainable water management approach in the domestic sector.