Scope & Objectives

Agriculture provides food, fibre, energy, and, last but not least, it provides a living for many people around the world. The potential drawback of agricultural production is pollution of the terrestrial and aquatic environment by nutrients, pesticides, trace elements, antibiotics, and natural and synthetic hormones. Growth in agricultural production, as it has occurred in Europe and North America since 1950s, and more recently in many other parts of the world, threatens the quality of groundwater and surface waters or has already led to deterioration of the quality of these waters. Typical hotspot areas occur in Denmark, the Netherlands, northern Italy, Germany, France, China, USA and New Zealand. Trends like population and economic growth, and climate change may add to the challenges to abate water pollution, whilst others like technological development, may support the development of effective strategies.

Policies to abate deterioration of water quality have been developed and programs of measures to improve water quality have been implemented over the last decades all over the world. For example, the European Union has adopted directives that aim at good quality of all waters by 2027 (Nitrates Directive in 1991, Water Framework Directive in 2000). Experiences of the last 15 to 25 years indicate that it will be a great challenge to achieve these objectives and within the timeframe that has been set. Nevertheless, the European Commission monitors compliance with these directives and several Member States have been forced through the European Court of Justice to amend their national legislation, for example the Netherlands in 2003, France in 2013/2014 and, more recently, Germany in 2018.

In other parts of the world, e.g. in New Zealand, the government has initiated a national science challenge to improve land and water quality. Recently, California and other USA states have also implemented laws that should control water pollution, amongst others, by agriculture. Nevertheless, it has become clear that achieving the objectives of these policies gets more difficult, not only since the easier, low-cost measures already have been implemented, but also because there is a tendency to increase agricultural production. For example, the government of New Zealand strives to increase agricultural production and at the same time improve water quality. Is such a combined objective a realistic one?

In addition, other policies, for example to abate climate change, may affect land use and thereby water quality. Are we aware of potential conflicting policies? Countries use different approaches to implement measures, which approach works best? What are the experiences with measures enforced by law (top down) compared to implementation on a voluntary basis (bottom up)? Experiences show that the latter depends on a long term investment in building relationships, gaining mutual trust and raising awareness. Do we have the resources and enough time for such approaches? These are some of the issues that are addressed at LuWQ2025.

LuWQ2025 is the sixth follow-up to the successful LuWQ conferences, LuWQ2022 (Maastricht, the Netherlands), LuWQ2019 (Aarhus, Denmark), LuWQ2017 (The Hague, the Netherlands), LuWQ2015 (Vienna, Austria) and the LuWQ2013 conference (The Hague, the Netherlands).

The LuWQ conferences have their origin in the series of so-called international MonNO3 workshops focusing on monitoring the effectiveness of the Nitrates Directive’s Action Programs. The first MoNO3 workshop was held in The Hague in 2003 and the second MonNO3 workshop took place in Amsterdam in 2009.