Mapping The Turkish Water Ecosystem

Kök Projekt

Published in

Kök Projekt

4 min readOct 12, 2020

An Introduction to Stakeholders in the Turkish Water Ecosystem

by Yekta Kuseyrioğlu

Understanding the Sector

As Kök Projekt, we are an agri-food startup accelerator and an innovation partner for the food, agriculture, and water sector companies. We are passionate about our job. We are deeply immersed in research and prepare reports to understand the sector.

Thus, we shared Turkish Agricultural Ecosystem Maps, Turkish Food Ecosystem Map, and Turkish Agricultural Cooperatives Map in recent months.

We know that recognizing stakeholders in a sector is a good way to understand the dynamics of the research area.

As we are also curious about the water sector, we have now decided to publish the Turkish Water Ecosystem Stakeholders Map. When we dive into the water world, we saw a complex chain featuring various players on the ground creating complex networks.

With this map, we aim to understand this complex world, gain greater visibility of the water ecosystem, and raise awareness about the start-up world.

Water: An Infinite Resource?

Today, the challenges within the water sector are a major concern for modern societies. Even if water can be a renewable source, we use this finite resource in an unsustainable way; adding pollution and climate change is making these challenges worse.

If we look at a world map we see a planet of water. However, freshwater forms only 2,5% of all the water on the planet[1]. Nevertheless, modern societies need lots of fresh water for industrial, municipal, and agricultural use.

According to FAO Stat, agriculture is the biggest user of freshwater. At the global level, agriculture consists of 69% of water withdrawals, industrial usage is 19%, and the municipal has a ratio of 11% [2].

In Turkey, water withdrawal ratios show similarities with the world average ratios. Agricultural usage consists of 74%; industrial and domestic usage consists of 13% and 13%, respectively. All these uses place pressures on water quantity and water quality. In terms of water resources, with 1500m3 usable water per person, Turkey is in the category of water constraint countries. Thus we need to create a sustainable water ecosystem for the next generations.[3] For a sustainable water ecosystem, Integrated river basin management is proposed in the 11th Development Report.

Building The Map

Governmental Organizations

From large scale agriculture use to individual domestic use, water impacts every corner of our lives. For that reason, Turkish governmental organizations have a primary role in the sector.

We started our research to understand which governmental organizations are involved in the sector. We read the 11th Development Plan Report: Water Resources Management and Security prepared by the Ministry of Development and understood each actor's role. We also looked at the National Water Plan (2019–2023) Report, prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, for sourcing more information.

Startups

In our second step, we searched for start-ups. Water is essential for life, and it’s always a critical consideration to establish a community. To grow food, we need water. Agriculture accounts for the majority of the water used around the world.

By 2050, our world will likely have two billion more people to feed nutritiously and sustainably. Thus we will need more food, which also means more water. We need to transform our water ecosystem into a more sustainable one.

Startups, as they adapt quickly, pivot faster, use technology, and get knowledge generated by data, could play a critical role in this transformation. They show how technology can be leveraged to improve sustainability.

In our map for the section of startups, we used our Turkish Water Startup database. We worked closely with Startups Watch, the Turkish Startup Ecosystem Intelligence, and we’ve improved our data. On our next step, we’ve collaborated with the Patent Effect. Patent Effect supports technology-driven companies and research institutes to unleash the power of patents to create an impact on their innovation journey and define the Patentpreneurs: Start-ups who have at least one patent/utility model applications.

While categorizing our data, we searched for the primary purpose or value proposition of each team. Eventually, we’ve placed them into three categories. We strongly believe that categorization makes understanding easier.

Corporates

As Kök Projekt, we are an innovation partner for food, agriculture, and water sector companies; thus, we carefully follow the corporates in the sector. There are many national and international corporate firms operating in the water sector. Moreover, many corporates invest in water technologies to create a sustainable system by generating, collecting, and interpreting the data.

In recent years, corporates have also become active supporters of the agriculture ecosystem, organizing and sponsoring events and supporting acceleration programs. Hence in our map, we categorized corporate firms into ten categories. You will find a vast range of corporate firms from smart agriculture firms, tech giants to engineering firms, and more on the list.

Quick Disclaimer

Quick disclaimer; This is not an exhaustive list of all the stakeholders of the water ecosystem. You can reach our 2020 Turkish Water Ecosystem Stakeholders Map here.

Our Turkish Water Ecosystem Stakeholder Map 2020 (For Full Version)

We know that a map has many limits, but it is an excellent tool to dig deeper and understand the research area. Therefore, we welcome your thoughts and look forward to publishing our next maps!

For any of your questions or feedback, you can shoot us an email to:

info@kokprojekt.com