The 26th edition of EU Green Week, held in Brussels on 3–4 June 2026, sent a clear and urgent message to policymakers, businesses and innovators across Europe: investing in nature is no longer an ethical choice. It is an economic imperative. Under the theme Investing in a Nature-Positive Economy, this year’s conference marked a decisive shift in how Europe frames the relationship between environmental health and economic performance. For practitioners of Industrial Symbiosis, the implications are profound.

Nature is no longer “Outside” the Economy. Commissioner Jessika Roswall opened the conference with a keynote that set the tone for the two days: healthy ecosystems are not a luxury to be protected at the margins of economic activity, but foundational infrastructure underpinning food production, water security, climate resilience, public health and long-term competitiveness. Biodiversity loss, soil degradation and water stress, she argued, are not environmental issues alone. They are economic and security risks.
This framing was reinforced throughout the programme. The opening high-level plenary “Investing in Nature, Investing in Resilience” brought together Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and Anthony Agotha, Special Envoy for Climate and Environment Diplomacy at the European External Action Service, alongside representatives of the Capitals Coalition and the World Economic Forum. Their shared message was that in a context of geopolitical instability and mounting pressure on food, water and energy systems, nature must be placed at the heart of Europe’s resilience agenda, and not as a “nice to have,” but as a strategic necessity.
The finance dimension was equally prominent. The “Show Me the Money” panel, featuring Eva Mayerhofer from the European Investment Bank and Stine Lehman Shack of Danske Bank, explored how to close the nature-finance gap and make long-term investment in ecosystems bankable. The session on “Nature Credits” added a further dimension, examining whether biodiversity and restoration credits can become credible, scalable instruments for mobilising private capital. Estimates discussed at the conference suggest that every euro invested in nature can generate between eight and thirty-eight euros in economic benefits, figures that reframe conservation as productive investment.
A parallel strand explored soil, urban greening, regenerative farming and rural resilience, consistently returning to the same insight: ecosystems are productive systems. When they function well, they underwrite the economy. When they are degraded, the costs are borne across sectors.
What this means for Industrial Symbiosis? For the Industrial Symbiosis community, EU Green Week 2026 was not a backdrop but a call to reposition.
Industrial Symbiosis has traditionally been understood as the exchange of material, energy and water flows between industrial actors, the waste of one process becoming the input of another. This model has delivered measurable results across Europe. But the Green Week agenda points to something larger: a new logic in which industrial systems are embedded within a broader territorial network that includes secondary raw materials, biomass flows, ecosystem services, carbon sequestration and environmental data infrastructures.
In this expanded frame, Industrial Symbiosis evolves beyond industrial networks into a model of territorial resource governance, one that connects industry, agriculture and ecosystems as functional components of the same system. The resilience of an industrial cluster is inseparable from the resilience of the natural systems surrounding it. And conversely, well-designed symbiotic exchanges of heat, water, organic residues, by-products can actively support ecosystem regeneration rather than simply reduce industrial waste.
INSET’s Policy Brief: Building the Evidence Base for IS in Europe
INSET, which is an European Erasmus + project working to mainstream Industrial Symbiosis as a tool for sustainable territorial development, is working in parallel with this evolving policy landscape. Following an analysis of the state of Industrial Symbiosis in five European countries (France, Spain, Italy, Slovenia and Lithuania), INSET has cross-referenced national findings with the EU regulatory framework and identified persistent barriers to scaling IS practice.
The lack of visibility over resource flows and potential synergies between actors remains one of the most significant obstacles to IS development. Digital tools as waste and by-product tracking systems, AI-assisted matching platforms, product digital passports, life cycle assessment tools, and integrated environmental data infrastructures, have the potential to transform this, enabling the identification and coordination of resource exchanges at territorial scale. Industrial Symbiosis could shift from fragmented local initiatives to coordinated, territorially optimised resource systems.
Equally, governance emerges as a central enabling condition. Effective IS implementation requires coordination across industries, farmers, public authorities, financial institutions, researchers and civil society. This reflects the broader shift toward integrated territorial governance models that the Green Week conference made visible, models in which economic, ecological and social systems are managed together rather than in separate policy silos.
INSET has translated these findings into a Policy Brief that identifies concrete recommendations for enabling IS at national and European level. The document is now entering a public stakeholder consultation phase across the five partner countries. This is a critical moment: the Brief’s recommendations will be stronger, and more likely to influence policy, the more they reflect the experience of those who are actually working at the intersection of industry, resource management and territorial development.
Are You Working on These Issues? We Want to Hear from You!
If you are active in France, Italy, Spain, Lithuania or Slovenia as an industrial practitioner, a local authority, a researcher, a sector association, a financial institution or a civil society organisation, and your work touches on resource flows, circular economy, waste valorisation, territorial development or the future of industrial areas, INSET wants to interview you.
Your experience is exactly what the consultation is designed to gather. The findings will feed directly into a Policy Brief aimed at shaping how Industrial Symbiosis is supported, funded and governed across Europe.
Get in touch with the INSET partner active in your territory, and help turn one of Green Week’s most important messages into policy reality: that nature and economy are not in competition. They are, when managed well, the same system.