Top Posts of 2022

In these early days of the new year we continue our annual tradition of looking back on the top posts of the previous year. 2022 was a big year for freshwater ecosystems, with increasing public and political attention focusing on the urgent need for their protection and restoration.

In mid-December, the UN Biodiversity conference COP15 in Montréal, Canada produced the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which outlines a series of global goals and targets for nature conservation and restoration. Crucially, the Framework highlights the need to protect ‘inland waters’ alongside land and sea environments.

Target 2 of the Framework commits governments to ensure that 30% of land, inland waters and sea are restored by 2030, whilst Target 3 states that 30% of land, inland waters and sea should be effectively conserved and managed by 2030. The targets are ambitious, and the timelines are relatively short, but the explicit role of freshwaters in the Framework is a significant moment, and follows years of concerted campaigning and advocacy.

Thank you to everyone who read our articles in 2022, we’re looking forward to another busy year, and are grateful of your support. Here’s our top posts from last year – happy 2023!

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What are nature-based solutions and why do they matter? (January)

Open a tap in New York City and flows what many locals call the “champagne of drinking water”. New York is one of the few cities in the USA with a public drinking water supply that doesn’t rely on expensive filtration plants. And the reason for this “champagne” supply? The network of forests, streams, lakes and reservoirs in Catskill Mountains watershed to the north of the city. Estimates suggest that if it wasn’t for the natural filtration processes occurring in the watershed the city would have to invest more than $10 billion in water filtration facilities.

The natural processes occurring in the Catskill watershed thus provide a range of environmental, social and economic benefits to local communities. Such aspirations are at the heart of a recent turn in environmental management towards so-called “nature-based solutions”, which aim to use natural processes to help tackle socio-environmental challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and flooding. (read more)

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What is the European Green Deal and what does it mean for freshwater life? (February)

In December 2019, the European Commission presented its European Green Deal, a new set of policy initiatives aimed at making the EU climate-neutral by 2050. Described by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, as Europe’s “man on the moon moment,” the Green Deal has wide-ranging ambitions to support environmental protection, green economies, sustainable agriculture and technological innovation across the continent. But what exactly does the Green Deal aim to do, and how might it impact Europe’s freshwater ecosystems? (read more)

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IPCC Climate Change 2022: Six Themes for Freshwater Ecosystems (March)

Human-induced climate change is causing significant disruption to global ecosystems and the lives of billions of people who depend on them, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group Report, released this week.

The Working Group Report suggests that assessments of climate change impacts on freshwater systems have been limited in previous reports. As a result, this report devotes significant space to assessing how freshwater systems are responding to ongoing climate change, and the potential opportunities for mitigation and adaptation. These assessments build on reviews of cutting-edge freshwater science and management, from which six key themes are highlighted here. (read more)

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Restoring Wild Haweswater: an interview with Lee Schofield (March)

Restoration is rarely a straightforward process: its ecological trajectories can be slow and uncertain, and often require the collaboration of numerous different people and organisations across a landscape. As a result, there is real value in finding out about how successful restoration projects have been planned and carried out.

Wild Haweswater is one such project. Located in the Lake District National Park in north-west England, the restoration of the Haweswater valley has been carried out alongside traditional hill farming, as a means of benefiting biodiversity, water and local communities. We spoke to Lee Schofield, RSPB Site Manager at Haweswater, to find out more. (read more)

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‘Risky habitats’: managing disease risk in wetland restoration (May)

The emergence of infectious diseases is an inherently environmental process. Evidence shows that the majority of diseases (such as Ebola) and almost all pandemics (such as COVID-19) are zoonoses, caused by microbes of animal origin. These microbes can ‘spill over’ into humans through contact with wildlife and livestock. Moreover, environmental degradation, agricultural expansion and biodiversity loss can all drive the emergence of disease through the disruption of ecological networks, and the creation of new ones.

Could ecological restoration help reduce disease risk, then, by supporting healthy ecosystems with natural checks on zoonosis transmission? Not necessarily, according to Dr Frauke Ecke, speaking in a MERLIN webinar last month. Dr Ecke’s work challenges the view that ecosystem restoration necessarily mitigates disease risk. Instead, she argues for a more nuanced understanding of the potential outcomes of restoration. She asks, can wetland restoration actually cause ‘ecosystem disservices’, which are harmful to human health? (read more)

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Fantastic Freshwater: 50 landmark species for conservation (May)

A dappled ‘starry night’ toad, lost to science for decades, but recently documented on indigenous lands in Colombia. An iridescent blue-banded kingfisher native to tropical streams on the island of Java. A West African tree-climbing crab which makes its home in tree holes filled with rainwater. These are some of the wonderful, but highly threatened, freshwater species highlighted in a new report authored by some of the world’s leading conservationists.

Released last week by the Shoal organisation, the Fantastic Freshwater report showcases fifty unique freshwater species threatened with extinction. These include a giant catfish, almost three metres in length, which migrates huge distances through the Mekong Delta, and a microscopic star-shaped fungi known from only two sphagnum bogs in Wisconsin, USA. Other wonders include a nocturnal Japanese firefly which flashes and buzzes through evergreen riverside forests, and a reclusive hairy-nosed otter native to wetland forests across southeast Asia. (read more)

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Major new Nature Restoration Law proposes restoring 20% of European ecosystems by 2030 (June)

The European Commission published a proposal for a major new European Nature Restoration Law yesterday. The proposal suggests a series of new binding targets to restore 20% of the EU’s land and sea by 2030, alongside deadlines for the restoration of important natural habitats. Further, it suggests that all European ecosystems in need of restoration should be restored by 2050.

The proposed Nature Restoration Law is an indication of the vital contemporary importance of ecological restoration, both in Europe and worldwide. The proposal is intended to build on existing environmental policy such as the EU Green Deal and Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 to ensure that Europe’s ecosystems are restored, resilient and adequately protected. (read more)

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Creativity and conservation: a Red List of creatures of Scandinavian folklore (July)

Linnéa Jägrud is a limnologist based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Her work in MERLIN addresses peatland restoration in Sweden. Over the course of a year, Linnéa travelled with photographer Tore Hagman across Sweden to trace the landscapes of Nordic folkloric creatures called ‘vaesen’. As Linnéa explores in this guest article, their search for vaesen reveals the deeply-rooted cultural and historical connections to nature in Swedish landscapes. These connections can, in turn, deepen our modern-day understandings of ecological conservation and restoration. (read more)

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MERLIN: Bringing Europe’s freshwaters back to life (September)

The MERLIN project held its first all-partner meeting last week in Fulda, Germany. Scientists, restoration managers and industry stakeholders all took part in valuable discussions over how best to mainstream freshwater restoration in Europe.

A new video exploring the key issues around the project was premiered at the meeting. A collaboration between the Schneeaufmoss creative agency and MERLIN partners, the video outlines five key challenges for contemporary freshwater restoration, and how the project is tackling them. Packed with beautiful footage of the continent’s waterways, the video is narrated by Christian Cummins of FM4 Radio.

The new video follows the recent launch of the first MERLIN podcast. A second podcast was recorded at the meeting, exploring ideas around transformation, disruption and inspiration as drivers of freshwater restoration. (read more)

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Restoring Europe’s ecosystems to reverse biodiversity loss and build resilience to climate change (November)

Recent major reports on the state of the world’s climate and biodiversity clearly show the need for urgent, large-scale ecosystem restoration. Across the world, ecosystems are being degraded at rates faster than efforts to protect them, whilst ongoing climate change places increasing pressures on their health and functioning.

An awareness of the need to urgently restore healthy, resilient ecosystems underpins a partnership of major EU funded projects: WaterLANDS, SUPERB, REST-COAST, and MERLIN. Addressing the restoration of wetlands, forests, coastlines and freshwaters respectively, the projects have been funded to support the European Green Deal’s aspirations of a low-carbon, climate resilient future.

Each project aims to demonstrate how best-practice approaches for ecosystem restoration can be applied and upscaled across the continent. They are each developing innovative ways of implementing nature-based solutions in restoration to benefit ecosystems, societies, and even economies. Central to this work is the need to effectively monitor and share the results of ecosystem restoration to help wider global communities plan effective restoration strategies. (read more)

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You can read all of 2022’s posts here. Thank you for reading!