MedAqua-II is the continuation of the MedAqua Project ICA3-CT-1999-50002 (1/6/2000 to 31/8/2001), a cluster project for the INCO-MED water projects. Its overall aim was – and will con-tinue to be for MedAqua-II:

• bring running and finished projects in INCO-MED water closer together,
• assess the emerging scientific progress and identify the future needs for research in the water management area, and
• ensure a widespread dissemination of their activities and results in the Middle East region.

A prerequisite for any form of synergy of disparate groups or actors is information about their activities and contacts with the players involved in them.
The MedAqua-II Joint Conference and the MedAqua-II interactive WEB site will provide both of these requirements. MedAqua has established itself as a forum and hence as a means to make such synergy happen. Co-operation itself has to come from the projects involved in this cluster. Synergy and co-operation is a process that takes time and in practice often needs more than one catalytic event. This is one of the reasons why this project is being proposed as a con-tinuation of previous activities.

Specific objectives

The objectives of the first MedAqua project, namely to bring ongoing projects closer together and to provide a “one-stop-shop” of information about them and their activities in the Internet, are still -valid for MedAqua-II:

1. A common web-site providing information about projects, announcing conferences and work-shops planned by these projects, and providing all presentations from the MedAqua-II Con-ference in electronic form
2. Organise a Joint Conference for all INCO-Med projects and interested organisations on both sides of the Mediterranean