The MERLIN Marketplace: innovative products and services for nature restoration

Restoring damaged and depleted ecosystems in Europe is a hot topic right now, following the adoption of the Nature Restoration Law earlier this summer. As awareness of the need for ambitious nature restoration projects grows across the continent, so too does the recognition of their links to economic prosperity and human well-being.

The new MERLIN Marketplace is designed to support the growing need for cutting-edge solutions and services which help mainstream nature restoration. It connects the suppliers of tools which support restoration with audiences of environmental managers, community groups and policy makers.

Whilst the Marketplace is continually growing, it already hosts an array of innovative products and services for freshwater restoration. These include river barriers to manage plastic pollution, AI tools to support sustainable irrigation schemes, ‘egg boxes’ for introducing fish eggs into rivers, and real-time water quality monitoring systems, amongst many others.

The featured products and services aren’t limited to freshwaters, though. They also include satellite-powered systems for tracking carbon footprints, AI systems which support forest conservation, agroecology consultants, and 3D mapping systems to help visualise restoration projects.

The Marketplace is a key resource for helping advance the MERLIN philosophy that effective restoration requires the transformation of our societies towards more sustainable models. Through promoting these products and services, the goal is to help mainstream their use in everyday life, economies and environmental projects across Europe.

Central to this ambition is linking the suppliers of these products and services with their users, as MERLIN coordinator Sebastian Birk explains, “For effective implementation on-site, we need experts who guarantee trustworthy and professional realisation of their products and services. The MERLIN Marketplace is developing into the perfect platform for this matchmaking.”

The MERLIN Marketplace has been developed through two partner organisations: OPPLA and Connectology. “We are excited to witness the extensive variety of products and services now available on the platform,” says a Connectology representative. “We are particularly enthusiastic about welcoming financial institutions to support our restoration sites and scientific partners to register their cutting-edge solutions and services on the Marketplace. 

“We are confident that this advanced platform will enable us to engage with a broader spectrum of companies dedicated to developing nature-based solutions for our shared objective of restoring and conserving the world’s precious freshwater resources,” they conclude.

Designers and suppliers of innovative products and services which support restoration projects can register their information for free on the Marketplace. Each year, the MERLIN project hosts its Innovation Awards to celebrate the products and services featured on the Marketplace. You can read about this year’s winners here.

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This article is supported by the MERLIN project.