What is hampering current restoration effectiveness? - An EKLIPSE Expert Working Group report

Report Summary Target 2 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy states that “By 2020, ecosystems and their services are maintained and enhanced by establishing green infrastructure and restoring at least 15% of degraded ecosystems”. The Biodiversity Strategy is the only EU policy document that contains a direct and quantitative target for restoration. However, many other European Union level policies, including the Birds and Habitats Directives, the Water Framework Directive, and the Common Agricultural Policy, relate to restoration aims in indirect ways. The need to upscale restoration effectiveness across the European countries could never be more urgent. Numerous recent key Reports have identified restoration as key to overcoming biodiversity and climate challenges (eg Diaz et al 2019, Arnet et al 2019). At the closing statement of the UNCCD COP14 Climate Action Summit in September 2019, the Executive Secretary Mr. Ibrahim Thiaw, stressed that land restoration, at proper scale, is one of the cheapest solutions to address the global crises of climate and biodiversity loss. As highlighted in the recent Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration (Scholes et al., 2018) Restoration actions occur across a diversity of ecosystem types and have the potential, if implemented effectively, to improve human well‐being, improve ecosystem functions and biodiversity and enhance the wider natural environment; Gaining a better understanding of the limitations to effective restoration can provide evidence to support more effective investments in restoration. This knowledge can also support stakeholders from wide ranging fields, with the outcomes being to reduce the degradation of landscapes. Reduced degradation provides opportunities to improve climate resilience and mitigation, improve food security and improve human well‐being. In this context, during the second call for requests (CfR.2/2017) the EKLIPSE project received a request from BiodivERsA15, focused on the identification of knowledge gaps on ecosystem restoration. More specifically, the requester wanted to know What is hampering the effectiveness of existing approaches that aim to restore biodiversity and ecosystem function and services? The topic of this request has gained high policy relevance and importance following the approval of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021 to 2030), by the General Assembly on the 1st March 2019. This initiative aims to promote the restoration of degraded or destroyed ecosystems globally as a means of combating the impact of climate change and biodiversity loss, and to increase food security and water supply. This offers an unprecedented opportunity from the European perspective to implement the findings from this Report, to advance restoration effectiveness across Europe in response to increasing global pressures to scale up restoration actions. To respond to this request, EKLIPSE selected 12 experts from 8 European countries (Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom and 1 non‐ European Country (Australia), to form an Expert Working Group (EWG), which initially met in Brussels in July 2018 and continued to meet remotely, on a weekly basis until the completion of the Report. Two distinct approaches were implemented to respond to this question: a scoping review of the global literature and a three stage Delphi process with additional European experts from a range of sectors and countries. The global literature scoping review identified three Key Barriers to effective restoration as: a. The lack of a long‐term monitoring of restoration outcomes. b. The lack of a clearer definition of goals and planning. c. The need for better research methodologies. with the Key Enabling factors being: a. Use of appropriate and well‐tailored restoration techniques. b. Societal integration with the restoration project. c. Success assessment and evaluation. The four Key Groupings of Barriers identified in priority order by the Delphi process were: 1. Insufficient funding. 2. Low political priority for restoration. 3. Conflicting interests of different stakeholders. 4. Lack of integrated land use planning. During the Delphi process Experts identified key solutions to overcome these Barriers (1‐4) above. Taking into consideration all the findings of our work, recommendations to overcome the barriers have been provided and grouped around the key groupings of barriers: 1. Resourcing and Incentives – make restoration possible. 2. Policy – make restoration count. 3. Society – make restoration a preferred option. 4. Knowledge ‐ make it into life‐long learning, link, network and facilitate use of knowledge. We hope you enjoy reading our Report and making use of our findings during upcoming restoration actions across Europe.

(5) synthèse ou interprétation, (20) projet, (2) étude, (GB), *Biodiversity, *Adaptation, (12) reconstitution

Available online at http://www.eklipse-mechanism.eu/documents/13905/0/Restoration+Report/