The pollution of water resources by human activities is one of the biggest concerns facing the world today. Last year, the AquaticPollutants Innovation Challenge on Science Communication offered all interested parties the opportunity to submit their ideas on improved knowledge transfer from a scientific project to targeted stakeholders on the topic of aquatic pollutants. These pollutants include contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), such as antibiotics or PFAS, as well as harmful microorganisms and antibiotic resistant bacteria or antibiotic resistance genes.

To successfully address CECs, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and pathogens, the results and outputs from research must be implemented, transferred to end-users (stakeholders), and communicated within different sectors. We therefore asked the participants to share their ideas on how knowledge and research results could be communicated and what methods and tools they would like to try to best fill the knowledge gaps on this topic.

And the winner is…

A jury selected the winning team: the organisation H2O-People. Their mission is to enable personal and professional growth through unique programmes aimed at connecting talent to realize potential throughout all career phases. As collaboration partners, the H2O-People have also made it their mission to design tailor-made strategies for participation and funding within EU and other collaboration projects.

As such, they also support iMERMAID – Innovative solutions for Mediterranean Ecosystem Remediation via Monitoring and Decontamination from chemical pollution. iMERMAID is an EU-funded project aiming to develop, implement and promote innovative and replicable strategies to prevent, monitor and manage the problem of toxic chemical pollution (especially from CECs) in the Mediterranean Sea basin. The project wants to create a sustainable and lasting impact on society. In addition to introducing technological advances and market-ready solutions, iMERMAID strives to influence policy at the EU and local levels and to change the behaviour of the local population and stakeholders.

The idea

But what exactly is H2O-People's idea in terms of knowledge transfer? "For iMERMAID, we want to combine a comprehensive social media campaign with a local school project," explains Naomi Timmer from H2O-People. The campaign aims to educate the inhabitants of the Mediterranean about CECs in the ocean and their impact on marine pollution. One key focus of their submission is that individual actions and decisions can also play a major role for the entire ecosystem: "If fewer and safer chemicals are used, the condition of the Mediterranean can be improved as a result," says Naomi Timmer.

The school project also aims to make the younger European generation aware of the problem of chemical marine pollution. "We want to show them that they too can contribute to a clean marine ecosystem," says Naomi Timmer. The iMERMAID campaign is currently being planned. As soon as it starts, we will share more details about it.