WaterLANDS : Characterising supportive governance and policy

In this deliverable "WaterLANDS : Characterising supportive governance and policy", led by Plan Bleu, WaterLANDS project analyses the importance of governance models in wetland restoration with the aim of helping stakeholders develop collaborations to scale up wetland restoration in Europe and the Mediterranean.

WaterLANDS (Water-based solutions for carbon storage, people and wilderness) is a 32-partner project funded by the European Horizon 2020 Green Deal programme. The project has a budget of €23 million and will run for five years. WaterLANDS will restore wetlands decimated by human activity in Europe and lay the foundations for upscaling wetland restoration and conservation over much larger areas. The project officially started on 1 December 2021 and will contribute to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030).

WaterLANDS aims to promote the expansion of wetland restoration. Socio-economic factors, insufficient stakeholder engagement, lack of government commitment, lack of funding and inadequate knowledge exchange on restoration methods have all been identified as barriers to effective wetland restoration. As a result, most past restoration work has been modest in scale, has taken place primarily where there is only one responsible landowner or organization, and has often been undertaken primarily for conservation reasons. . WaterLANDS will seek to overcome these obstacles by investigating the combination of factors that will enable wetland restoration to spread across Europe.