Location: France, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Portugal, Lithuania

Duration : 3 years (January 2023 to December 2025)

Objectives:

Led by the University of Aveiro with 15 partners from 9 countries, the Horizon Europe project RESTORE4Cs (Modelling RESTORation of wEtlands for Carbon pathways, Climate Change mitigation and adaptation, ecosystem services, and biodiversity, Co-benefits) aimed to assess the role of restoration action on wetlands capacity in terms of climate change mitigation and a wide range of ecosystem services using an integrative socio-ecological systems approach. An assessment of various restoration and conservation measures in six European coastal wetlands aimed to collect evidence on coastal wetlands’ ability to store carbon, reduce GHG emissions, protect biodiversity and deliver other ecosystem services considering different climate and land use scenarios

MedWet’s role

MedWet led on the aspect of training and development of a Community of Practice for wetland restoration, which built on our development of the Resolution XIV.17 of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands on the protection, conservation, restoration, sustainable use and management of wetland ecosystems in addressing climate change. The learnings and success stories resulting from this work continue to feed MedWet’s catalogue of solutions wetlandbasedsolutions.org.

Following an inclusive and bottom-up approach, MedWet promoted the identification and co-creation of solutions by facilitating interactions with stakeholders at all pilot sites, which include interviews, participatory workshops and training sessions.

Based on these findings, interactive multi-stakeholder workshops were organized, focusing on wetland restoration (Danube Delta), habitat specific restoration (Dutch Delta, Ria de Aveiro), balancing nature conservation with human activities (Curonian Lagoon), and freshwater management (Camargue). In some cases, these workshops marked the first collaboration among diverse stakeholders. Discussions highlighted shared values, challenges, past and ongoing activities and potential solutions related to specific topics. In some cases, this already led to proposed restoration options, such as engineering interventions or more nature-based solutions.

Workshops at the majority of pilot sites revealed governance fragmentation and uncoordinated stakeholder engagement as significant barriers. The need to strengthen stakeholders’ cooperation, strategic site-level planning, and knowledge exchange was identified to align restoration efforts with national and EU priorities.

The website wetlandbasedsolutions.org hosts the Community of Practice as well as numerous other resources.

MedWet also supported the production of 11 policy briefs, which can be found here.

Funding:

Horizon 2.5 – Climate, Energy and Mobility (main Programme), Horizon 2.5.1 – Climate science and solutions
Budget: € 6 644 842,50 (EU contribution € 6 644 837)

Partners:

University of Averio; Tour du Valat; MedWet; University of Valencia; University of Barcelona; University of Malaga; University of Bucharest; University of Salento; LifeWatch ERIC; Wageningen University; Klaipedos University; Eco-logic; ETC UMA; Consiglio Nacionale delle Ricerche; Wasser Cluster Lunz; RSS; VERTIGOLAB.

Website:
Wetland-based Solutions | A hub for wetland ecological restoration
Sustainable management of wetlands: the RESTORE4Cs project

MedWet Contact
Info@medwet.org