WaterLANDS aims to enable an upscaling of the restoration of wetlands. Socio-economic factors, insufficient stakeholder engagement, lack of government commitment, lack of funding and inadequate exchange of knowledge of restoration methods have all been identified as barriers to successful restoration. WaterLANDS works to overcome these barriers  through the use of Knowledge Sites and Action Sites to co-design best practice, supportive governance structures, and economic funding models with local knowledge and European expertise.

PROJECT GOALS

• Demonstrate wetland restoration and establish a basis for the upscaling of restoration on a large scale
• Identify barriers to the upscaling of restoration and how to overcome these
• Ensure that different disciplines work together to provide integrated and co-designed solutions with a common aim of informing restoration at identified ‘Action Sites’
• Apply a community-led paradigm of stakeholder engagement and co-design or co-creation
• Inform restoration with knowledge learned from former or existing projects and ‘Knowledge Sites’
• Provide tailored restoration and financial plans for each restoration site
• Communicate results and incubate a legacy through guidelines, tools, information, knowledge, and facilities to support restoration at a continental scale

WORK PACKAGES

WP1 – Restoring Services

WP2 – Engaging Communities

WP3 – Aligning Governance (ASPECT’s main involvement)

WP4 – Mobilising Finance

WP5 – Co-creating Best Practice

WP6 – Restoration Management

WP7 – Communication, Dissemination, Knowledge Management, and Exploitation of Results

WP8 – Project Management

WP9 – Ethics requirements