Publications

Publication:Report
 
The white paper brings together evidence and recommendations from seven EU-funded projects, including RESTORE4Cs. The paper highlights the urgent need to accelerate wetland conservation and restoration across Europe, as degraded wetlands continue to drive biodiversity loss, weaken water resilience, and turn ecosystems that can store carbon into sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Prioritising Wetland Conservation and Restoration in Europe

United voices for more policy impact

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Publication:Article
 
In this article Dr. Stephan Sina provides an overview of the key provisions of the Directive, with a focus on water protection offences, and examines, based on the planned implementation in Germany, the extent to which the Directive facilitates the prosecution of water crime. This is also of interest to Switzerland, as the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Crime Law, adopted in 2025, is modelled on the Directive.

Die EU-Umweltstrafrechtsrichtlinie: Der Schlüssel zur konsequenten Verfolgung von Wasserkriminalität?

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Publication:Report
 
Prescribing decisions are currently guided primarily by therapeutic efficacy, patient safety and cost-effectiveness. A recent feasibility study explores how environmental information could also become part of routine pharmaceutical decision-making in the future. At the centre of the proposed concept is a German Environmental Pharmaceutical Index (EPI), designed to provide standardised environmental information on active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and make it readily accessible for healthcare professionals.

Arzneimittelindex Umwelt

Machbarkeitsstudie zur Etablierung eines pharmazeutischen Umweltinformations- und Klassifikationssystems in Deutschland

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Publication:Report
 
This publication documents informational and educational materials for the fields of medicine, pharmacy, and health communication. The project aimed to reduce the release of pharmaceutical substances into the environment and to strengthen the integration of environmental knowledge into education, teaching, and professional practice. The project produced openly accessible materials for universities and continuing education programmes, pharmacies, and the general public. In addition, an online platform was established to consolidate scientific background information, infographics, and teaching resources.

Zu Risiken und Nebenwirkungen fragen Sie ... das Umweltbundesamt!

Informations- und Lehrmaterialien für einen umweltbewussten Umgang mit Humanarzneimitteln

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Publication:Article
 
Nature-based solutions (NbS) at the landscape scale are increasingly recognised for their role in supporting biodiversity, enhancing ecological connectivity and contributing to climate change adaptation. However, their assessment and implementation remain complex. This article examines these challenges using the concept of pondscapes – networks of ponds and their surrounding terrestrial habitats – as a case for landscape-scale NbS.

Challenges for Assessing and Implementing Nature-based Solutions at Landscape-scale

Insights from project on ponds and pondscapes

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Publication:Article
 
This article examines how innovations in stakeholder engagement can contribute to sustainability transitions in water governance. Based on a systematic review of 61 studies, the paper shows that engagement approaches take diverse forms and often combine multiple governance modes. Public authorities frequently act as initiators, while civil society actors play a central role in many cases.

Innovations for Stakeholder Engagement in Water Governance

A Systematic Literature Review From a Sustainability Transition Perspective

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Publication:Book Section
 
As Europe seeks to restore its degraded freshwater ecosystems, a key question comes into focus: is the EU’s main agricultural policy delivering on its environmental promises? In a new paper published in the special issue Wetlands in a Changing Climate: Restoring Coasts and Floodplains, Dr Josselin Rouillard examines whether the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2023–2027 is effectively supporting freshwater restoration.

Does the Common Agricultural Policy 2023–2027 Support the Restoration of Freshwater Ecosystems?

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Publication:Report
 
This publication provides a quantitative overview of the development and status of environmental crime in Germany between 2013 and 2024, based on data from the police crime statistics ("Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik") and the Federal Statistical Office's criminal prosecution statistics ("Strafverfolgungsstatistik"). The report provides both an overview of general trends and an in-depth account of individual environmental offences. The report was prepared by a team from Ecologic Institute on behalf of the German Federal Environment Agency.

Umweltdelikte 2024

Auswertung von Statistiken

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Publication:Report
 
This pilot roadmap is designed to support national authorities and stakeholders in Romania in develo ping a strategic framework for planning coastal wetland restoration, for example in the context of National Restora tion Plans. It draws on the latest scientific data, tools and methods developed by the EU-funded project RESTORE4Cs.

Restoring Coastal Wetlands in Europe – Romania

Pilot roadmap on coastal wetland restoration in Romania

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Publication:Report
 
This report presents a strategic, evidence-based approach to support the upscaling of freshwater restoration and implementation of Nature-based Solutions across Europe. Central to the approach is the MERLIN Upscaling Workflow, a flexible decision-support tool that uses Europe-wide datasets to identify high-impact restoration areas.

Scaling up Freshwater Restoration and Nature-based Solutions in Europe

An evidence-informed workflow

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Publication:Report
 
This pilot roadmap is designed to support national authorities and stakeholders in Portugal in developing a strategic framework for planning coastal wetland restoration, for example in the context of National Restoration Plans.

Restoring Coastal Wetlands in Europe – Portugal

Pilot roadmap on coastal wetland restoration in Portugal

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Publication:Report
 
"RESTORE4Cs Restoring Coastal Wetlands in Europe – Implementation Roadmap to Guide National Action" is a practical guidance document, designed to support national authorities and stakeholders in developing or strengthening strategies for coastal wetland restoration, helping countries meet these and other related obligations. The Implementation Roadmap builds on the latest scientific knowledge and integrates key RESTORE4Cs findings, tools and methodologies into a coherent decision-support framework.

Restoring Coastal Wetlands in Europe

Implementation Roadmap to Guide National Action

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Publication:Article
 
Coastal wetlands deliver critical ecosystem services but remain highly degraded by anthropogenic and climatic pressures. This study presents an integrated structural, functional, and socio-economic assessment of Marjal dels Moros, a managed Mediterranean brackish marsh in eastern Spain, to evaluate restoration effectiveness and inform climate-based management. Six subsites representing well-preserved, altered, and restored conditions were analyzed for water and sediment properties, microbial community composition, and greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes, alongside a multi-criteria socio-economic evaluation of restoration scenarios.

Marjal dels Moros: a model site for the structural, functional, and socioeconomic assessment of managed Mediterranean marshes

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Publication:Policy Brief
 
Restoring coastal wetlands at scale requires more than setting targets: decision-makers need to determine where restoration is most needed, feasible and beneficial. The RESTORE4Cs Spatial Decision-Support Toolbox addresses this challenge by combining harmonised spatial data to identify and compare restoration opportunities across Europe.

Advancing Evidence-Based Prioritisation for Coastal Wetland Restoration in Europe

The RESTORE4Cs Spatial Decision-Support Toolbox

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Publication:Policy Brief
 
Implementing the EU Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) requires reliable spatial information on habitats, land use and ecosystem pressures. This RESTORE4Cs policy brief highlights an important challenge: established classification systems describe landscapes differently, which can influence environmental assessments.

Bridging Landscape Classification and Policy Objectives: the case for crosswalks

RESTORE4Cs Policy Brief

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Publication:Fact Sheet
 
This fact sheet summarizes the information contained in the publication Burgos Cuevas et al. (2025): Moving from interconnected crises to systemic solutions. Resource efficiency, nature-based solutions, and systemic transformation as responses to the complexity of the triple planetary crisis. Interim report, Climate Change 83/2025. German Environment Agency: Dessau-Roßlau. https://doi.org/10.60810/openumwelt-8108.

Moving from Interconnected Crises to Systemic Solutions

Resource efficiency, nature-based solutions, and systemic transformation as responses to the complexity of the triple planetary crisis

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Publication:Report
 
Climate change is exacerbating drought, low water levels, and heavy rainfall in German river basins, posing new challenges for agriculture, forestry, water management, ecosystems, and municipal planning. Against this backdrop, the project KliMaWerk investigated how the landscape water balance can be made climate-resilient through integrated, practical strategies and measures. The KliMaWerk final report summarises the key findings and strategic conclusions.

Nachhaltige Bewirtschaftung des Landschaftswasserhaushaltes zur Erhöhung der Klimaresilienz (KliMaWerk)

Management und Werkzeuge

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