Water: an important resource

The efficient management of water resources, together with energy and GHG emissions, is one of the most challenging issues of the XXI century. Water is in fact a limited resource, which quality and quantity are jeopardized even more by climate change. The value of the access to water is increasing both in developing countries and in the rich ones, where water is one of the scarce resources of the productive processes and, as a result, is increasing its value.

The agriculture sector uses 70% of the fresh water of the planet (22% industry and 8% the civil sector), and such number is going to increase with the growth of population and wealth. In the Water Economy the joined effort of the public and the private sector, each one responsible of the optimization of its role, it’s of pivotal importance: the public sector must protect the resource and guarantee the right to access, while the private must contribute with technological and management innovation to increase the efficiency and minimizing waste.

The AQUA project

The AQUA project aims at innovating the productive processes of the agri-food business sector to reduce water consumption and waste, in order to demonstrate the feasibility and the potential achievable. In particular the project will:

• Evaluate the international best practices regarding efficient water management and reuse, analyzing and quantifying the benefits in terms of environmental and economic outcomes.
• Define a water saving kit to spread among companies.
• Engage the companies of the agri-food sector through the involvement in a panel of experts and through the actual implementation and test of the kit in their systems.

These objectives will be achieved through the implementation of innovative forms of collaboration and confront between the public and the private sector, i.e. the private-public partnerships, instruments of governance that favor the capitalization of the experiences of all the subjects involved, for a better management of the commons.

The private-public partnerships

The complexity linked to environmental resources management and their correct evaluation and valorization in the market, needs the joined and coordinated action of the public institutions, in charged of protecting the public good and limiting externalities, and the private sector, responsible of contributing with its knowledge and competences and final user of the resource.

In such a context private-public partnership (PPP) is an innovative instrument for systematizing the scope and possibilities of action of both subjects, valorizing synergies and creating a win-win condition.

PPPs allow the integration in an innovative way of levers, commitments and knowledge of different actors, who can contribute to the achievement of a common goal: water consumption reduction, correct prizing and valuing of the resource, the development of a local sustainable and competitive economy.

The industries of the agri-food sector

The Agri-food sector in Italy, and especially in the Po Valley, with its inherent characteristics of the great production and processing area of the national agribusiness, sees the co-existence of heavily intensive and industrialized productions and realities that make the territorial presence and the development of local products their main activity.

The correct and responsible use of water will ascertain in the future the sustainability and competitiveness of the businesses and of the socio-economic fabric of the territories where they are located.

Actions and timing