Assessing and consolidating recent scientific advances on freshwater ecosystem restoration.

Freshwater ecosystems are degraded due to barriers and other morphological changes, loss of wetlands and floodplains, over abstraction of surface and ground waters, land management that reduces infiltration and generates pollution in land and seas. In responding to the climate and biodiversity crises and acknowledging that healthy water ecosystems are essential for climate adaptation there is an opportunity to determine how to prioritise and deliver aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem restoration at scale throughout Europe, both in rural and urban areas. There is a need to build on recent research from disparate research communities and approaches like the mapping and assessment of ecosystem services to identify how restoration can deliver on multiple objectives (ecosystem services, biodiversity protection, sediment management, climate adaptation, mitigation) and deliver value for citizens.

The objective of this topic is to determine how to implement the restoration of freshwater ecosystems and remove hydromorphological barriers to ensure sustainable environmental flows and to support achievement of good status in both surface and ground waters, long-term water resource management, biodiversity and climate resilience.

This topic should result in a comprehensive review of the knowledge about and past experience with effective approaches to freshwater ecosystem restoration. The scope should include methods for detection and identification of ecosystem degradation, assessment and restoration potential, methods for prioritisation including ones based on mapping of ecosystem services, options for restoration including ones for heavily modified water bodies, approaches to long-term management of restored ecosystems and approaches for monitoring and evaluation including proper evaluation of environmental impacts of restoration options and contribution to climate mitigation. The governance aspects should play important role including strengthening relevant institutions, cross-sectoral collaboration between water and other relevant authorities, financing models for restoration measures, and long term maintenance and protection of restored bodies, economic analysis of costs and benefits, including citizens engagement.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.