We asked AMR experts and EDAR8 Scientific Committee Members to weigh in on the issue.

As environmental compartments are increasingly recognised as active components of the AMR pathway rather than passive sinks, there is a growing imperative to develop interventions that interrupt the entry, persistence, and dissemination of resistance determinants. These determinants span microbial vectors, mobile genetic elements (MGEs), and selective chemical agents (e.g., antimicrobials, metals, biocides), as well as supporting physical agents such as microplastics and tyre-derived particulates. Effective mitigation therefore requires control across multiple interacting layers of the system, not simply reduction of bulk contaminant loads.

A diverse portfolio of interventions is emerging across sectors. Beyond clinical and veterinary stewardship programs, upstream controls in industrial production (particularly pharmaceutical manufacturing and repackaging) and agriculture/food systems are being strengthened through improved waste management, source segregation, and engineered treatment barriers. In parallel, downstream interventions, including advanced wastewater treatment and targeted bioremediation, are being deployed to reduce existing environmental burdens. Together, these approaches signal a transition from reactive management to system-level control of AMR risks. However, important mechanistic and operational gaps remain.

Wastewater treatment plants represent critical control points for limiting the dissemination of resistance determinants via effluent, biosolids and cycled water pathways. Technological advances—including ozone and UV-based advanced oxidation processes, engineered adsorption media (e.g., functionalised polymers and mineral based advanced oxidation processes), and high-performance membrane systems—are demonstrating increased capacity to remove or transform selecting chemicals and degrade antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Yet, the field remains constrained by a lack of harmonised indicators and insufficient mechanistic understanding linking operational conditions (e.g., redox regimes, residual oxidants, hydrolic retection, and solids management) to the fate and mobility of ARGs and MGEs. Critically, most current metrics quantify abundance rather than transfer potential, limiting their utility for risk assessments and decision-making.

As Professor Despo Fatta Kassinos of the University of Cyprus and EDAR8 Scientific Program Committee member notes: “The critical research question is how to design, integrate, and validate treatment barriers that achieve verifiable genetic pollution control, using metrics that connect molecular signals to functional risk reduction across treatment, discharge, and reuse pathways.”

Similarly, Professor Juliana Calabria de Araujo of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and EDAR8 Scientific Program Committee member highlights the importance of upstream solutions: “A key research question is how to design scalable, energy-efficient treatment strategies, especially for source-control of hospital wastewater prior to sewer discharge, that reduce AMR loads entering municipal wastewater treatment plants without creating secondary risks such as toxic by-products or selective pressure for further resistance.”

Addressing these challenges requires integration across disciplinary and sectoral silos. Effective AMR mitigation must interrupt AMR dynamics across the One Health continuum, linking environmental reservoirs with human, animal and plant systems. This necessitates coordinated input from process engineering, environmental microbiologists, molecular biologists, analytical chemists and quantitative risk assessment—working in concert with utilities, industry, and regulators. Moving beyond descript monitoring towards mechanistically grounded, quantitative evaluation frameworks is essential to compare intervention performance, reliability, and cost effectiveness of interventions and technologies under real world conditions.

Progress is evident in the emergence of frameworks that distinguish between persistence and horizontal gene transfer, enabling more refined assessments of intervention impacts on transformation, conjugation. These approaches begin to capture the ecological feedbacks that govern AMR propagation, shifting the focus from presence to process. Such advances are critical for developing interventions that not only contain resistance, but actively suppress its evolution and spread.

Problematic environmental AMR is not an inevitable by product of modern systems, but a dynamic process that can be influenced through informed design and governance. The convergence of disciplines—facilitated through platforms such as EDAR8—is enabling a transition from awareness to agency, where engineered and managed systems become tools for stewardship rather than passive conduits of risk.