Freshwater restoration should be at the heart of how farming is managed in Europe, according to new recommendations.

Reshaping the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to support freshwater ecosystems by encouraging water-friendly farming practices is a key task, accoring to a team of researchers from the EU MERLIN project writing in a newly published policy brief. The researchers draw on cutting-edge science and fieldwork to outline a vision for water-resilient agricultural landscapes across Europe.

Our guest is one of those researchers – Josselin Rouillard from ECOLOGIC – and in this podcast we’ll hear about how the futures of European freshwaters and farming are so closely linked, and what we can do to help them flourish.

In this podcast we take a tour of the MERLIN Academy, an online platform which offers free resources and training to support researchers, practitioners and policy makers in applying cutting-edge freshwater restoration concepts to their work.

We hear from Academy coordinator Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber from BOKU, and module leaders Erica Zaja from CEH, Gerardo Andalzua from ECOLOGIC and Kerry Waylen from the James Hutton Institute, alongside reflections from Academy user Lars Kristian Selbekk.

The interviewees emphasise the importance of sharing free, open-access information on freshwater restoration to wide audiences. They discuss the importance of nature-based solutions, financing and economics, stakeholder engagement and governance to contemporary restoration approaches.

https://project-merlin.eu/academy.html

Harnessing the potential of natural processes in freshwater restoration can create significant ecological, social and economic benefits, according to a major new report.

Researchers from the MERLIN project analysed restoration monitoring data from eighteen rivers, streams and wetlands across Europe to assess the impacts of so-called ‘nature-based solutions’ on the environment and society. Such approaches aim to help amplify natural processes to benefit both people and nature. For example, a healthy wetland can help filter water pollution and buffer floodwaters, whilst planting so-called ‘riparian zones’ of trees and other vegetation along river banks can help provide valuable biodiversity habitat, keep water bodies cool, and lock up carbon to help mitigate climate change.

The new report explores the impacts of a diverse range of European freshwater restoration strategies using nature-based solutions. These include peatland rewetting, beaver reintroduction, floodplain restoration and reconnection across a variety of landscapes. The results show that such restoration approaches can generate significant benefits for nature and society. In particular, many of the impacts support the goals of the European Green Deal, which aims to support climate neutrality, sustainable economies and healthy, diverse ecosystems across the continent.

In this podcast, we hear from two MERLIN researchers behind the new report: Laura Pott from the University of Duisburg-Essen, and Axel Schwerk from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. Laura and Axel cover a range of topics including how to monitor the impacts of nature-based solutions in complex landscapes across Europe, the importance of engaging stakeholder groups around an ecosystem, and the value of Theory of Change approaches in helping map how a restored landscape might develop over time.