Europe Nutrient Management – Guided Approaches for Greater Export reduction (ENGAGE), No. S-WATER4ALL-25-2

Project No. S-WATER4ALL-25-2
Project title: „Europe Nutrient Management – Guided Approaches for Greater Export reduction“ (ENGAGE)
Project duration: from 2025-04-01 to 2028-03-31
Project coordinator: University of Évora (Portugal)

Project manager in MRU: prof. dr. Paulo Alexandre da Silva Pereira, paulo@mruni.eu
Other partners: Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (Norway), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden), Nodibinajums Baltic Studies Centre (Latvia), Polytechnic Institute of Beja – School of Agriculture (Portugal), Mykolas Romeris University (Lithuania)

Summary:

In Europe, the drivers for excess nutrient pollution vary regionally due to climate and anthropogenic differences, highlighting the need for better cross-boundary management of nutrient dynamics and maximising related ecosystem services:

• Provisioning (water supply and food/drink)
• Regulating (water purification)
• Supporting (nutrient cycling)
• Cultural (recreation)

Aims and objectives:

ENGAGE aims to implement a novel approach to reduce nutrient export and improve ecosystem services in national and international river basins across Europe.

ENGAGE proposes to achieve this aim by creating regional stakeholder boards (SB) composed of local, regional and national authorities to develop a multi-actor engagement process with the aim of identifying nutrient pollution problems, co-designing strategies to reduce nutrient export and enhancing nutrient regulating ecosystem services, and identifying decision-support tool needs and ecosystem service indicators. Simultaneously, an EU-level SB-network will be created to identify which regional nutrient reduction strategies and decision-support tool requirements identified by the regional SBs have greater scalability and potential for replication across Europe. These strategies, modelling and remote sensing needs will be deployed across three European river basins:

• Guadiana River Basin (Portugal & Spain)
• Gauja-Koiva River Basin (Latvia & Estonia)
• Hobølelva River Basin (Norway)

In coordination with the SB-network, the findings of the work will be used to co-design policy recommendations and guidelines for improved large-scale nutrient management across Europe.

 By integrating scientific innovation with stakeholder-driven insights, ENGAGE seeks to advance sustainable nutrient management, promote cross-boundary collaboration, and provide practical tools and policies to address nutrient pollution in European aquatic ecosystems.

The project is funded by the European Commission, Water4All 2023 Joint Transnational Call “Aquatic Ecosystem Services” and FCT (Portugal) / RCN (Norway) / FORMAS (Sweden) / LZP (Latvia) / LMT (Lithuania)