2021 edition

In 2000, the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) set Member States the challenge of restoring European water bodies to good status within twenty years. At the time, there was a lack of knowledge to implement the directive, so in 2007 the Ministry of the Environment’s Directorate for Water and Biodiversity (DEB) and the National Office for Water and Aquatic Environments (Onema) entered into a major collaboration with a number of research bodies. Cemagref/Irstea and INRA (now INRAE) were among the first partners to join forces, with research being carried out in hydrology, biology and ecology. While work is continuing to achieve the objective of good ecological status, science’s contributions to the implementation of this innovative and ambitious public environmental policy are already significant. We look back over 20 years of collaboration between French research and government departments.