Narrative :

An R&D project in co-creation with our partners Bova Enviro+ and Mantis.

Blue Growth requires navigating trade-offs between economic, social, and environmental aspects. The MES (marine ecosystem services) concept offers a new way of thinking and dreams to become a decision-making tool for sustainable marine development. WABESCO will develop an universal, adaptable, and relevant framework and tool for evaluating all actors and projects active in sustainable blue growth, “the EA Wheel” (ecosystem assessment). This tool will be scientifically supported by an open source “MES network model”, allowing dynamic and interdependent processes between organisms and actors that traditional siloed ecosystem valuing approaches cannot capture. Network-based approaches focus precisely on assessing tangible and intrinsic interactions between organisms and actors as a multi-layers network of processes/interactions providing a powerful and more realistic way to capture synergies and trade-offs, in co-creation with the blue economy stakeholders.

Specifically WABESCO targets the following concrete, verifiable results:

• The development of an EA-wheel prototype, ready to use for future market developments.
• An increase in the in-house knowledge and approaches related to ecosystem services.
• A 100 % working prototype of the MES network model, available as open source.
• A trial & error and learning for the EA wheel and MES network model from 2 use cases.
• Co-created prototypes based on stakeholder engagement together with a roadmap for further R&D of both EA wheel and MES network model.