Mediterranean countries share commitments to protect and restore coastal wetlands, but progress is monitored through a range of regional, European and international frameworks. A common evidence base could make these efforts more coherent. A RESTORE4Cs policy brief proposes a harmonised set of indicators to help countries track progress while aligning reporting under the Barcelona Convention with wider biodiversity and climate commitments.

Wetland restoration requires more than investment in the restoration work itself. Management, monitoring and maintenance need to be funded for years to come. Research within RESTORE4Cs suggests that it is precisely these recurring costs that often lack secure, long-term funding. A policy brief therefore examines how public finance could be complemented by appropriate forms of private investment.

Protecting and restoring coastal wetlands is embedded in several European environmental and climate policies. But assessing whether these efforts are succeeding requires comparable information on how wetlands are changing over time. A RESTORE4Cs policy brief proposes a common set of indicators to make progress measurable across Europe.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

This paper analyses the European Union's (EU) policy framework, alongside international and regional agreements relevant to wetland conservation and restoration, focusing on coastal ecosystems. Drawing on policy content analysis, it assesses how 36 EU policies and multilateral agreements support or limit coastal wetland restoration and conservation efforts in Europe.

The second Policy Brief of RESTORE4Cs "Unlocking potential of coastal wetlands in Europe: Integration into National Restoration Plans", highlights the critical role of National Restoration Plans (NRPs) under the EU Nature Restoration Regulation in enhancing the restoration and resilience of coastal wetlands

On 19 February 2025, the RESTORE4Cs project will host a webinar titled "Tools and Indicators for Coastal Wetland Restoration to Promote Climate Resilience in Europe."

The first policy brief of the EU-funded RESTORE4Cs project highlights the importance of European coastal wetlands in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing carbon from the atmosphere, promoting their restoration as a climate change mitigation solution.

Healthy wetlands are acknowledged for being among the most effective sinks for carbon and for providing other valuable ecosystem services. In contrast, human-impacted wetlands represent a major source of greenhouse gases (GHG). Important research questions on the GHG abatement potential of wetland restoration and on management and restoration actions to maintain and promote the mitigation and adaptation capacity of European wetlands are still to be answered due to major data and knowledge gaps. The RESTORE4Cs project (a 3-year Research and Innovation Action funded by the EU) aims to fill this gap by assessing the role of restoration action in wetlands climate change mitigation capacity and for the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services using an integrative socio-ecological systems approach.