The project
Advancing sustainable water management through the upscaling of Innovative nature-based solutions to promote climatic adaptation
The challenge
Droughts, floods and groundwater pollution induce long-term and chronic adverse impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and societies. Annual financial losses due to extreme droughts in the European Union are estimated at approximately €9 billion, and future climate projections predict these losses will rise to more than €65 billion per year by 2100.
Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) — such as wetlands, infiltration basins and restored floodplains — can reduce flood risks, mitigate droughts and improve water quality, while being cost-effective in the long term. According to the European Environmental Agency, the implementation of NBS across all landscapes is key to achieving major EU policy priorities, in particular the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the EU Adaptation Strategy.
Yet NBS related to managed aquifer recharge (MAR) remain under-implemented. The main barriers include:
Moving from isolated success to systemic impact requires robust and adaptive frameworks — and business models — that enable the scaling of MAR-related NBS across diverse environmental, socio-cultural and governance contexts.
Advancing nature-based solutions
for water resilience
The main goal of INVESTWATER is to demonstrate, implement and upscale Nature-Based Solutions across diverse Mediterranean contexts, by providing robust and adaptive tools, frameworks and business models that support effective decision-making, long-term sustainability and broader uptake of these solutions.
Specific objectives
SO1 — Co-develop innovative decision-support tools for the implementation, improvement and upscaling of NBS-to-MAR, including locally adapted tools for water and land planning, opportunity and feasibility mapping, cost-effectiveness analysis, and an upscaling handbook with step-by-step guidance and best practices.
SO2 — Evaluate and enhance current best NBS coupled with water management practices at basin scale, by identifying, cataloguing and mapping existing NBS, documenting their water-related functions, quantifying key performance indicators, and establishing a roadmap for further NBS implementation at each pilot site.
SO3 — Incorporate temporal aspects of climatic and regulatory adaptation to ensure the long-term effectiveness of NBS, by integrating historical climate data and future projections into physical models, providing spatio-temporal drought indicators from Earth Observation and in-situ monitoring, and informing robust decision-making.
SO4 — Promote knowledge transfer, public engagement and collaborative development through capacity-building and project development workshops, participatory design of multi-functional NBS solutions, targeted dissemination, and the co-creation and renaturalization of rivers, forests and aquatic ecosystems.
Our approach
Step 1 — Engage:
a multi-stakeholder and participatory approach
Stakeholder engagement is a founding pillar of INVESTWATER. A Community of Practice (CoP) is established at each pilot site, bringing together local communities, governmental agencies, NGOs, urban planners, engineers, policy makers, hydrologists, ecologists, industry representatives, investors and academic institutions.
Special attention is given to involving women and marginalized groups, ensuring their views are adequately represented. Through the CoPs, stakeholders co-design the project outputs across all phases — from assessment to implementation and upscaling.
Step 2 — Zoom in:
opportunity and feasibility assessment of NBS projects
The project leverages Earth Observation data (e.g. Sentinel-2, Landsat) and long-term monitoring to identify environmental pressures and NBS priority areas. Socio-economic evaluation and participatory Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) assess NBS options at watershed level, supported by NBS Opportunity Maps.
Unsupervised machine learning and statistical methods estimate the feasibility of different NBS, enabling uncertainty analysis and probabilistic decision-making. A dynamic Decision Support System based on WEAP, coupled with hydrological (SWAT) and hydrogeological (MODFLOW) models, simulates NBS performance under different climatic and operational scenarios.
Step 3 — Zoom out:
adaptive scalability roadmaps and business models
Building on the tools and lessons of the previous steps, INVESTWATER develops and tests an Adaptive Scalability Framework (ASF) to support the broader adoption of NBS-to-MAR across diverse Mediterranean contexts. The ASF identifies strategic enablers of upscaling across technical, economic, institutional and governance dimensions.
Business models — built on the Natural Assurance Business Canvas — identify value propositions, cost-sharing schemes and financing instruments. Training activities build capacity in regions beyond the pilot sites, contributing to institutional learning, replication and strategic policy embedding.