InnWater - Promoting social innovation to renew multi-level and cross sector water governance

InnWater is a European project funded by the European Commission within the framework of the Horizon Europe Research & Innovation programme.

It responds to the need to find sustainable solutions for arbitrating water uses that take into account the realities of the field facing the challenges of climate change.

To do so, its main objective is to promote social innovation to renew multi-level and cross-sectoral water governance.

Thanks to the expertise of the 13 consortium partners, led by OiEau, the project will develop a set of tools and services.

The strength of the project is to be developed in close collaboration with the stakeholders of 5 pilot sites. The challenge will be to progressively extend the target group of stakeholders to develop a community of practice on the theme of new modes of governance, adapted to the local conditions of the stakeholders (climatic, environmental, economic, regulatory and social).

InnWater falls within the scope of a:

• multi-level, creating bridges between the local and European levels;
• cross-sectoral, to embrace the challenges of the Water-Energy-Agriculture nexus, so as to propose ways out of "silo" management.

A governance platform will be developed. As an online tool, it will provide access to:

• recommendations (political, economic and regulatory to support the transition of EU member states to the Green Deal)
• the governance matrix to help users decide on the direction of their governance,
• economic models for household pricing
• as well as a set of information and training modules on the challenges of water governance.

InnWater's transversal pillar is social innovation, which simultaneously considers four dimensions for the promotion and transfer of results: technological, governance, educational engineering and economic.

OiEau will ensure:

• coordination of the project,
• management of activities related to communication,
• dissemination and exploitation of the project results.

In addition, OiEau will be responsible for developing the governance platform.