WaVE is the project that seeks to utilize and revalue heritage on and around water. The partners thus not only want to preserve and further develop heritage and nature, but also expect side effects such as socio-economic growth and climate adaptation. WaVE stands for Water-linked heritage Valorization by developing an Ecosystemic approach. Together with various partners in Europe, we are looking at which policy instruments can be used to utilize heritage values in this way and what the effect of these policy strategies is. The WaVE project focuses on the improvement of regional and local policies to open up their possibilities for supporting the development of integrated adaptive reuses of water-linked cultural heritage sites in human settlements. The focus is based on the partnership’s commonality of having a rich history of cultural heritage that has been formed through an interaction with water as well as the shared vision that the correct valorisation of these forms of heritage, building upon its combined (i.e. integrated) socio-economic and nature-based elements is crucial for these sites to become drivers for regional growth and nature preservation. WaVe Partners share the common understanding, supported by the general consensus among European heritage value chain actors, that the focus on the integrated valorisation of water-linked cultural heritage is crucial and that it has not been outlined in its concreteness before. While local and regional policies and governance structures exist in partner regions that allow for the redevelopment of cultural heritage, there is a need to redefine the potentials of these policies to support integrated solutions that are able to unleash both socio-economic and nature-based values of water-linked cultural heritage sites. Moreover, as their integrated valorisation often affects both local and regional levels at the same time, the process needs to be tackled from both a local and regional perspective.