A new four-year Horizon Europe project will connect scientific evidence, stakeholder knowledge and decision-support to help Europe understand the ecological, socio-economic and wider impacts of nature restoration.
Nature restoration can deliver benefits for biodiversity, climate, ecosystems and human wellbeing. Yet deciding where, how and when to restore nature involves complex questions: What benefits can different restoration options deliver? What costs might they involve? How do impacts vary across places, sectors and groups of people? And how can decision-makers account for these effects when comparing restoration pathways?
NatuRISE – Nature Restoration Impact Assessment for Socio-Economic and Ecological Benefits officially began on 1 September 2026 to help address these questions. The four-year Horizon Europe project brings together 17 partners from 12 countries to strengthen the evidence available to those shaping nature restoration policy, planning and implementation across Europe.
Making the wider impacts of restoration visible
Restoration outcomes extend beyond individual habitats or environmental indicators. Changes in ecosystems can affect land use, ecosystem services, economic activities and people's wellbeing. Benefits and costs may also be distributed unevenly, with different implications for land managers, local communities, economic sectors and regions.
Understanding these interconnected effects is essential when comparing restoration options and considering their implications. However, the evidence needed to assess ecological and socio-economic impacts together can be dispersed across datasets, analytical approaches and assessment methods.
NatuRISE will bring these perspectives together to improve understanding of the benefits, costs, trade-offs, synergies and distributional effects of nature restoration. Its work will connect ecological, land-use and socio-economic modelling with data, indicators, integrated assessments and stakeholder knowledge.
From scientific evidence to decision support
NatuRISE will develop new datasets, indicators, models and assessment approaches to investigate the wider effects of different restoration options. EU-scale integrated assessments will be complemented by four case studies, providing real-world contexts in which to test and refine the project's approaches.
The project will also work with policymakers, practitioners, land and forest managers, researchers and civil society through workshops, interviews, co-creation activities and tool testing. Their knowledge and experience will help shape outputs around the questions and decisions that matter in practice.
This work will feed into a decision-support tool designed to help users compare restoration options, examine their potential benefits and costs, and explore trade-offs and distributional effects. By connecting scientific analysis with stakeholder needs, NatuRISE aims to make complex evidence more accessible and relevant to restoration planning and decision-making.
Supporting more informed and equitable restoration decisions
NatuRISE does not directly implement restoration measures. Its contribution is to strengthen the evidence and analytical tools available to the organisations and people responsible for restoration policy, planning and implementation.
The project's results will include scientific and policy outputs, datasets, indicators, assessment methods, decision-support applications, case-study knowledge and practical learning resources. These outputs will support users in examining restoration pathways and understanding how different options may affect ecosystems, economies and people.
Over its four-year duration, NatuRISE will work towards a more integrated understanding of restoration impacts, helping decision-makers assess options with greater insight into their wider consequences.
Follow the NatuRISE journey as the project develops the evidence, assessment approaches and decision-support needed to understand the full impacts of nature restoration.