Restoring nature

Significant recovery and long-term conservation

The loss of ecosystem integrity and biodiversity threatens our societies, economies, and the health of our planet. Yet many human activities damage, degrade and destroy the dynamic communities of plants, animals, and environment that we call ecosystems. For example, the replacement of species-rich grasslands with intensively managed monocultures of crops destroys existing ecosystems, while the spread of industrial pollutants damages food webs and disturbs the chemical balance of cropped and natural areas alike.

Ecosystem restoration is a powerful tool for conserving biodiversity, improving resilience, and building new social and economic opportunities. However, restoring ecosystems to pristine conditions is often not feasible or even desirable. Restoring nature is best viewed as a restorative continuum where the endpoint is not necessarily removing all human impact and innovative approaches can be used to restore biodiversity given contemporary conditions. Creating positive trends in different environments could start with restoring healthy soils, or with species (re)introductions, or creating more space for nature between and within intensively managed lands.

Co-creating new futures with restoration

Advancing ecologically healthy relationships between nature and culture is our goal. Therefore, understanding the interactions between social and physical worlds is critical to re-establish self-perpetuating, resilient, and multifunctional landscapes. The economic basis for conservation must also be transparently addressed from the beginning to ensure our interventions are optimised, fair and sustainable. Ecosystem restoration can be closely connected to social change, for example in restoring abandoned land into a healthy and vibrant space for people and nature. In this way, restoration can provide exciting opportunities to learn how to integrate different values and knowledge systems held within a community.

Research demonstrates that rather than focussing narrowly on one objective, restoration stakeholders should connect across the landscape and its associated value chains to set clear and effective goals. The process is enriched if partners agree to learn together and respond flexibly to restoration dynamics over time. Such a local to national and global network can interact with both direct and indirect drivers of biodiversity change, thus addressing both the symptoms and root causes of biodiversity loss.

A restorative worldview

Technological developments in monitoring led by Wageningen researchers will support adaptive management of restoration activities in intensively farmed landscapes as well as those in more remote areas. Developing policy and governance tools, including improved decision support models, for policymakers assists restoration planning and supplies evidence of its effectiveness to a global audience. Transparently and equitable governance is especially important as local biodiversity initiatives become increasingly seen as offset products which can be traded (and funded) internationally.

Knowledge sharing and collaborative learning processes enhance the uptake of nature restoration initiatives by identifying successful roadmaps to success across vastly different economies and ecosystems. We work with business and research partners to create resilient ecosystems in practice, since such ecosystems form the basis of our natural capital and will create a liveable planet in the future. Explore some of our projects below to learn more.