Authors: Stephen Knox, Kathleen Stosch, Jane Atterton 

What if water could be the key to unlocking a thriving economy in the Forth region? The FORTH2O Business & Industry Core Team, part of the cross-sector FORTH2O Policy Innovation Partnership, is investigating how sustainable water use can drive innovation. Through focused discussions, we’re uncovering bold opportunities: Decentralised water-energy systems, water-inspired tourism, and smarter water management. Discover how science and local collaboration are shaping a resilient, prosperous future. 

1. Context and Purpose of the Business & Industry Core Team 

Working cooperatively across public, private, research, and community sectors, our aim is to inform better water resource management policy and support business and economic development. The goals of the partnership are to identify and build new business opportunities, make better use of and maximise the value of existing arrangements, and develop a more informed system of actors. 

To meet these goals the team is following the ESPIRO process which focuses on a six-step approach: 

• E – the exploration of ideas, initiatives, applications, and desired futures for the Forth region in relation to opportunities for businesses. 

• S – utilising systems-thinking to understand how different ideas, initiatives, and challenges influence one another.  

• P – prioritising and planning activities and actions that can generate and maximise value within our region. 

• I – iteratively develop interventions to realise this value through a learning by doing approach. 

• R – reflecting on the impact and effectiveness of our interventions through engagement and data insights. 

• O – optimising value from these interventions to deliver on our desired outcomes. 

2. From Exploration to Prioritisation 

The Core Team has met five times to explore ideas and opportunities for the region. These early meetings focused on understanding the landscape of business and water and are now transitioning from exploration into prioritisation: identifying viable opportunity areas and beginning to generate ideas for outputs, pilots, and future bids.  

Through two planned meetings in May and June we will collectively determine how the opportunities we have identified can be met through small and meaningful actions, complementary initiatives to existing activities, and create new interventions in the area to deliver value for business and industry. 

3. Three Thematic Opportunity Areas Emerging 

A. Decentralised Water-Energy Systems 

This theme explores how decentralised systems can support cost savings and new business models, a theme that has strong links to community energy projects and place-based planning. This theme emerged out of perceived business concerns for the costs of energy and the recognition by large organisations about how we can better report and repurpose water wastage to create and capture value. Key questions under consideration in this theme are: 

• What are the existing decentralised models in the UK or globally? 

• How can businesses and communities collaborate to implement them and co-create value? 

• What opportunities are there in the Forth region to develop such systems? 

An example of a decentralised system is the Rumbling Bridge Community Hydro Society in Perth and Kinross which is community-owned. The Society has  distributed funds worth £337,176 to their local community since 2017. 

Fig 1: Rumbling Bridge Community Hydro Society members visiting the site during the 2018 AGM (Photo courtesy of Teresa Geissler) 

B. “Water” Tourism and Cultural Opportunity 

Considering the Forth region’s vibrant cultural heritage, this theme explores how our connections to water, culture, and heritage can be leveraged to grow sustainable tourism opportunities for businesses. Key questions under consideration in this theme are: 

• How do we generate opportunities across business sizes, from micro-enterprises to larger firms? 

• How do we integrate local identity, storytelling, and ecology into business opportunities connected to tourism? 

Visit Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters 2021 is an example of how organisations can collaborate, and communities can become more engaged with their local blue spaces. 

Fig 2: Over a million people attended one of the 28 events during the Year of Coasts and Waters campaign (Photo courtesy of Visit Scotland) 

C. Innovation in Water Management 

This theme focuses on investigating how businesses can integrate new data and digital technologies to improve water efficiency and management. This is a more tentative theme, but with potential for synergy across the other areas. Its focus is on how key industries in the sector, such as agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and food & drink, can manage water more effectively to create and capture value. An example of this is Scottish Water’s trials into wastewater recycling technology – a first in the UK. 

4. Cross-Cutting Enablers and Considerations 

The exploration work has also identified three cross-cutting enablers that can help facilitate business opportunities in the region. 

• Water ‘literacy’ and the skills pipeline which focuses on how the water awareness and management skills that businesses need now and in the future are developed in the region. 

• Funding alignment and community engagement which identifies and leverages existing funding schemes to stimulate business innovation and ensure opportunities are embedded in local communities to widen market access. 

• Business cooperation which focuses on working together to avoid duplication and ensure value is distributed across the region. 

5. What’s Next for the Core Team 

Upcoming meetings will delve deeper into each opportunity area to identify priority actions and activities which can help unlock business opportunities. To support this work, the team aims to gather real-world examples and explore pilot proposals and case studies. 

The Forth region is uniquely positioned to lead on sustainable, water-centred business innovation. The FORTH2O Business & Industry Core Team is beginning to chart pathways toward practical, locally grounded solutions that connect economic opportunity with environmental and community resilience.