As of Month 48 (80% complete), restoration is underway at all sites, having mapped stakeholders, identified key indicators of restoration success and characterised supporting governance. Further a subset of sites have identified investible propositions for their wetland, to establish long-term finances for scalability. These include mechanisms to enter voluntary carbon markets, quantify water or biodiversity co-benefits, proposition of largescale regional financial plans or standardise micro-contributions from a variety of philanthropic sources. Importantly, the restoration now underway has involved the integration of all four pillars of knowledge and expertise, from ecology, community, governance and finance. Although requiring local adaptation in its application, this process has yielded strong interdisciplinary cooperation and more robust restoration that is better accepted by communities.
Ecology: SMART indicators for resilient restoration have now been identified, as have drivers of change in wetland ecosystem service function (particularly for GHG emissions). A database for wetland restoration case studies has been created, with linkage to existing databases (e.g. PeatDataHub), and a Decision Support System is now available to assist restoration practitioners.
Community: Existing experience of how to engage with communities has been harvested from our network of Knowledge Sites across Europe. In-depth stakeholder analysis has been conducted and strategies for long-term engagement have been composed for ASs. Engagement methods, including deliberation, participatory multi-criteria analysis and cost-benefit analysis have been examined and applied. An evaluation of the engagement process across our Action Sites will be complete by the end of the project.
Governance: Supportive governance and policy at Knowledge Sites has been identified, allowing the development of an idealised governance framework for wetland restoration, and a review of existing governance practices at our Action Sites. We have provided opinion towards the proposed Nature Restoration Law, along with our aligned Green Deal Restoration Cluster projects (MERLIN, Rest-Coast, SUPERB).
Finance: Our finance partners have conducted a thorough review of existing business and finance models across Europe and beyond. Further, a landscape-level assessment of each Action Site has provided a picture of “investibility” at each. There is direct involvement in the establishment of financial instruments at our Irish, UK and Dutch Action Sites and continuing input at two others. Ongoing alignment with the EIB and existing initiatives (Peatland Finance Ireland, Peatland Finance Collective) will ensure that eventual investor propositions are robust and do not compete.
Co-creation: Following an extensive global review of best-practice, co-creation framework has been produced. This has been paired with a schools programme and citizen science at four Action Sites, strengthening community buy-in. Although less active to date, this work will become central to WaterLANDS in combining ecological, community, governance and finance findings.
Communications: Communications output in the project up to month 48 continues to exceed targets. Social media following is extremely high and video outputs continue to be well received. Our artists-in-residence is resulting in some exciting outputs and installations, and WaterLANDS' exposure continues to be high-level in European policy circles, on national media, and through publications in top journals.
