Destination 4: Clean environment and zero pollution

Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway that helps to halt and eliminate pollution to guarantee clean and healthy soils, air, fresh and marine water for all and ensure that natural resources are used and managed in a sustainable and circular manner. To reach this objective, it will be vital to advance the knowledge of pollution sources and pathways to enable preventive measures to be rolled out, improve sustainability and circularity, apply planetary boundaries in practice and introduce effective remediation methods. To this end, the following is required:

• move towards achieving clean, unpolluted surface water and groundwater bodies in the EU and Associated Countries by increasing understanding of diffuse and point sources of water pollution in a global and climate change context, enabling novel solutions to avoid degradation and restore water bodies, aquatic ecosystems and soil functionality, and further improve the quality and management of water for safe human and ecological use, while strengthening the EU’s and Associated Countries’ positions and roles in the global water scene;
• balance N/P flows within safe ecological boundaries at regional and local level, helping restore ecosystems;
• move towards achieving clean, unpolluted oceans and seas, including in the Arctic, by means of successful scientific, technological, behavioural, socio-economic, governance and green-blue transitions;
• strengthen circular bio-based systems to operate within planetary boundaries, replacing fossil-based systems and their carbon footprint, mitigating climate change, and restoring biodiversity and protecting air, water and soil quality along the supply chain of biological feedstocks and industrial value chains within the EU and Associated Countries and across borders;
• substitute harmful chemicals for safer and more sustainable alternatives, notably by boosting innovative biotechnology and other sustainable technologies to create zero-pollution bio-based solutions;
• reduce the environmental impact of food systems, e.g. by increasing knowledge of the environmental and climate impacts stemming from the food systems and reducing pollution from plastic food packaging.