A Structured Pathway for Upscaling Freshwater Ecosystem Restoration?

Healthy freshwater and wetland ecosystems are vital for people and nature, yet many need restoration. Progress in current restoration efforts remains too slow, small-scale, and fragmented. This brief calls for bold, coordinated action that aligns with EU policy goals and delivers lasting benefits for nature, climate, and society. The time to upscale is now.

The Benefits of Nature-based Solutions: evidence using a systemic monitoring approach

Scaling up Nature-based Solutions (NbS) is central to the societal transformation required to tackle interconnected challenges such as climate impacts, water risks, and biodiversity loss. Yet implementation remains constrained by limited, robust evidence on how NbS deliver the societal benefits they promise—especially improvements in climate resilience to floods and droughts, and measurable gains in biodiversity.

This Policy Brief presents a systemic monitoring approach for NbS that captures their environmental and socio-economic performance across broad sustainable-development objectives and major economic sectors. Applying this framework to 18 freshwater restoration case studies across Europe — each guided by the IUCN Global Standard for NbS — we demonstrate how diverse and heterogeneous data can be synthesised into coherent, actionable evidence. The results show how consistent monitoring strengthens confidence in the effectiveness, co-benefits, and upscaling potential of NbS.

Synergies and Tensions between the EU Nature Restoration Regulation and the Water Framework Directive

Europe’s freshwaters remain under severe pressure, with most water bodies failing to achieve good ecological status despite two decades of effort under the Water Framework Directive (WFD). The newly adopted Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) offers an unprecedented legislative push to reverse ecosystem degradation, including binding targets for river connectivity, floodplain reconnection and wetland recovery. As both instruments converge on similar pressures and shared landscapes, their alignment will be decisive for Europe’s water resilience in the face of climate change. This Policy Brief explores how joint implementation of the WFD and NRR can transform restoration outcomes across Europe.

Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) - Design and Reform

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) plays a pivotal role not only in shaping Europe’s agricultural landscape but also in safeguarding broader environmental quality and societal well-being. At the same time, food production and rural economies depend fundamentally on healthy water systems.
This Policy Working Paper illustrates how water restoration can be embedded in future agricultural policies to enhance water resilience. It draws on research funded by MERLIN and Scottish Government Strategic Research Programme (KJHI-3-1 Land Use Transformations).

Ecosystem restoration and nature-based solutions: how do they differ and why does it matter?

Awareness of the need to restore Earth’s ecosystems has become increasingly mainstreamed in recent years. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration began in 2021, marking the start of increased efforts to halt the degradation of global ecosystems, and restore them to mitigate the effects of climate change and stop the collapse of biodiversity.

More recently still, the concept of nature-based solutions has entered the global environmental conversation. Nature-based solutions aim to manage natural processes to bring benefits to both people and ecosystems. For example, planting native forests in watersheds can help naturally filter water supplies, and reintroducing beavers can create the floodplain environments which buffer flooding.

Stakeholder engagement for the development and implementation of National Restoration Plans

The European Union (EU) Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) mandates each Member State (MS) to develop a draft National Restoration Plan (NRP) by September 2026, outlining how it will meet restoration targets. A critical component of this process is broad-based stakeholder engagement throughout all preparation phases.

Research conducted by four large Horizon 2020 Green Deal restoration projects across various European ecosystems offers guidance on how to activate stakeholder engagement for the successful delivery of NRR targets and provides concrete examples and tools to support this process (see links at the end of the document for resources covering.