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Last December, the countries of the world signed a historic agreement to protect nature: the Kunming-Montreal accord. In particular, they promised to ensure that, by 2030, at least 30% of degraded natural environments are being restored. An ambitious goal.
On the starting blocks, the European Union (EU) is already drafting a law on nature restoration, which should be voted on in June. This will oblige Member States to renaturalise certain environments in order to turn them into forests, marshes, meadows, rivers, mountains or peat bogs teeming with life. The EU estimates that 80% of its natural habitats are degraded.
The law provides for “specific objectives per ecosystem”, as well as a detailed timetable, “in order to ensure that the objectives are actually achieved”, explained Adalbert Jahnz, an environmental issues manager at the European Commission, to the specialized media. Inside Climate News.
In fact, Europe already knows quite well about natural restoration. Through its LIFE program, it has been funding ecological projects since 1992, many of which aim to repair damaged ecosystems. Besides, what does the restoration of a natural environment consist of? Here are five European examples:
Peat bogs are wetlands where organic matter accumulates over millennia. They are full of biodiversity, starting with the mosses that pile up there. In Ireland, the Living Bog project, carried out from 2016 to 2021, aimed to restore 3,000 hectares of “raised bogs”, i.e. acid bogs, poor in minerals and fed only by water from rain. This is achieved by blocking drainage ditches and eliminating invasive trees and shrubs. Time then does its work.
The Skjern River in Denmark runs through an extremely agricultural region. In the 1960s, the marshes flanking it had been transformed into arable land. However, these fields turned out to be of poor quality. From 1987, the government thus launched a project to renaturalize the river, which has found a floodplain where it can meander, and therefore purify itself. Water quality improved rapidly. Birds such as the avocet, crake and bittern have regained a favorable environment.
Posidonia, an aquatic flowering plant, is of crucial importance in the Mediterranean Sea. Sea urchins, molluscs, starfish, octopus and carnivorous fish abound in the large posidonia seagrass. However, it is estimated that in Europe, more than half of these rich marine environments have been degraded. In Andalusia, Posidonia cuttings and seeds were planted to revive the plant where it had died out.
In southern Finland, the forests — even those in protected areas — are far from being in a ‘natural’ state. Centuries of logging have transformed the landscape. Restoration projects now aim to diversify tree species, increase the amount of dead wood on the ground, and sometimes open clearings. These projects, coupled with an ambitious national program for the conservation of the forest territory, pave the way for an enrichment of the fauna and flora.
European funds from the LIFE program also contribute to the restoration of ecological environments frequented by humans and their animals, such as semi-natural pastures. In Latvia, these are rapidly disappearing due to changing farming practices. A “mobile grazing unit” is therefore deployed in this country, made up of 40 cows and 170 sheep, which browse from one abandoned meadow to another. Country birds are not left out.