New FP7 Project DESSIN: Making ecosystem services visible, inciting innovation

Making ecosystem services count is a key topic in the field of water quality and water scarcity solutions. This challenge lies at the heart of a new European FP 7 4-year project which was kicked off at a meeting in Brussels in the first days of February .

The new project "DESSIN - Demonstrate Ecosystem Services Enabling Innovation in the Water Sector" is part of a 50 Mio. Euro water innovation initiative recently launched by the European Commission and seeks to research and promote innovative solutions to water quality and water scarcity by defining a new approach in evaluating ecosystem services. This evaluation framework seeks to assess the value of services provided by freshwater ecosystems.

By making their contributions visible, the market uptake of innovative solutions is enabled, further catalysing innovation in the field. The project sites in Germany, Greece, Norway, Spain and The Netherlands were carefully chosen as they represent global water challenges. They also have the potential to function as "flagship" projects for market-based solutions to manage water quality and water scarcity. Project partners include the site owners and managers as well as SMEs that offer innovative solutions. Solutions include technological, modelling, management and monitoring approaches.

During the kick-off, the project partners introduced their perspectives on ESS evaluation in the context of innovative water solutions and discussed the overall project strategy. The project sites were presented in detail and first action items defined.

adelphi works on defining sample "route to market" methodologies together with these SMEs, for example by developing market analysis and commercialization approaches. In addition, adelphi works on promoting the ESS evaluation framework, which can serve as an additional sales argument for these solutions.