The Body of Knowledge

Gathering expertise

The project partners have been working for the past 2 years on building a strong community of water experts to openly share knowledge, experiences and opportunities.

In a first stage, six main challenges were identified as the key to tackle water scarcity and contribute to the overall reduction in water consumption and pollution in Southern Europe:

In a second stage, in 2021, a group of 16 top-class experts with different backgrounds worked together to map policies, entities and financing tools available to green-tech companies in Southern Europe. Their work resulted not only on a comprehensive mapping of the current situation, but also in recommendations to exploit synergies and identify the existing gaps and opportunities.

This paper aims at unlocking water governance in Europe. Innovative and effective water-related solutions are available to foster climate change readiness, including relevant services that can enable a more integrated water management planning across Europe. But their adoption must be on many occasions coupled with new and disruptive water governance schemes.

The White Paper can be downloaded for a small fee from here:

The needs of Southern European countries remain enormous: according to the World Water Council, “financial investment into water infrastructure needs to triple to EUR 255 billion annually to combat climate change” (World Water Council, 2017). This is confirmed by the Climate Policy Initiative, which states that water is still one of “underfunded” sectors, globally.

The Review of Financial Tools can be downloaded for a small fee from here:

In 2022, a pool of 47 experts have been selected to act as ambassadors of the project and collaborators. 12 of these experts are early career water scarcity experts. The experts will collaborate in:

• thematic seminars to disseminate the findings of the White Paper
• organising an exclusive training session for water entrepreneurs and update the Review of financial instruments available for scaleups, startups and SMEs to tackle water scarcity
• supporting the Innowise Scale problem holders

In collaboration with Water Europe, the Body of Knowledge group is co-hosting thematic seminars to disseminate the findings of the White Paper:

An interactive training course with international experts which offered to participants:

• Access a live and interactive online training session from 4 internationally recognised experts, in a small group
• To ask questions and get instant feedback on your plans
• Recording of the 4 specific training videos on accessing bank loans, venture capital, EU funding and international funding opportunities
• A free copy of the Review of financial tools for SMEs, startups and scaleup.
• To ask questions after the training session (3 weeks after your session)