Restoring Europe’s landscapes to tackle the effects of the climate emergency

Devastating flooding has killed at least 24 people as more than five times the average monthly rainfall for September has fallen across Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia in the past week. At the same time, the Portuguese government has declared a ‘state of calamity’ as wildfires have torn through forests across the north of the country.

Through these floods and wildfires, we are witnessing the effects of the climate emergency in action. “Make no mistake. This tragedy is not an anomaly. This is fast becoming the norm for our shared future,” the EU’s crisis management commissioner Janez Lenarčič told MEPs last week. “Europe is the fastest warming continent globally and is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events.”

In the same debate, Terry Reintke, co-president of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament, highlighted the need for an ambitious Green Deal to continue to reduce emissions to fight climate change across the continent. Allied to this, Reintke emphasised the need to invest in nature restoration programmes to mitigate the effects of climate change, and to further build solidarity between member states to work together on delivering restoration.

A few weeks before, environmentalists from across Europe met in Estonia to tackle the issues highlighted by Reintke. A key session at the European Conference on Ecological Restoration addressed strategies for restoring Europe’s ecosystems at a landscape scale under the EU Green Deal.

Historically, ecosystem restoration has been largely split into approaches that focus on individual ecosystem types: rivers, forests, wetlands, urban green spaces, and so on. Despite the growing agreement for the need for ambitious restoration across Europe to tackle the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis, this ‘siloing’ of approaches is still dominant.

The discussions brought together representatives from each of the EU Green Deal restoration projects, the Endangered Landscape and Seascape Programme, the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre and other institutions focused on restoration.

Together, they asked the question: what knowledge is needed to effectively restore entire landscapes across Europe? Given the recent adoption of the Nature Restoration Law, and the growing awareness of the need for nature-based solutions to tackle the climate crisis, these discussions are timely and vital.

MERLIN project co-ordinator Sebastian Birk took part in the discussions, and helped to convey four key themes for fostering landscape-scale restoration in Europe. “The session highlighted the complexities and challenges of working at a landscape scale,” Birk reflects, “but it also presented several opportunities.”

Bringing people into the conversation

First, Sebastian stresses the importance of stakeholder engagement and co-produced solutions in designing and carrying out restoration programmes. This means understanding local people, conflicts and cultures in restoration landscapes, and finding effective communication strategies to foster engagement and participatory governance.

In short, it’s important to remember that people are an inherent part of nature restoration, and their voices and perspectives need to be heard in its implementation. Across wide areas, it is likely that these perspectives will be diverse, and so creating spaces for conversation and conflict resolution are critical.

The complexities of restoring entire landscapes

Second, Sebastian emphasises the complexities of implementing and monitoring restoration projects across entire landscapes. Here, restoration planning must content with complex land tenures and boundaries, different government ministries, and data gaps in the condition of habitats. Moreover, there is the need to consider restoration as a long-term process, which can need adaptive planning and management over time.

So a key challenge is to bring diverse stakeholders together across wide areas to cooperate on long-term plans for restoration. The session highlighted the potential for better cooperation between bottom-up (e.g. community groups) and top-down (e.g. EU legislation) stakeholders, and the opportunities offered by creative engagement techniques to bring these groups on board.

In addition, the session highlighted the value of adaptive pilot projects which show the value of restoration to different communities, and allow environmental managers to make adjustments based on monitoring results.

Finding new funds to finance restoration

Third, Sebastian identifies the key theme of financing restoration. For ambitious restoration projects to be successful, there is a need for significant funding to support them. Here, the discussions highlighted the need for more public-private partnerships in raising long-term, stable funding. The need for better communication of the value of restoration – for example through demonstration sites and multimedia content – is identified as vital in fostering these partnerships.

Participants at the meeting discussed the value of aggregator organisations which can help pool smaller-scale funding into larger, more impactful and consistent funds for restoration. Similarly, they identified the need for ‘matchmaker’ services which can help bring together restoration organisations with fundraising and investor engagement.

Promoting nature-positive economies in restoration landscapes

Finally, Sebastian highlights the relationship between landscape restoration and local economies. Here, discussions focused on the need to help foster nature-positive economic opportunities – such as eco-tourism or sustainable farming – in restoration landscapes. There is the potential to help promote markets for such restoration economies, for example by helping producers scale their production and gain access to markets across the continent.

“By integrating local communities and mainstreaming nature-positive businesses,” Birk concludes, “these strategies can help overcome barriers and foster long-term success in landscape restoration efforts.”

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This article is supported by the MERLIN project.