Restoring nature is essential — but decisions about restoration are complex
Europe is facing growing pressure on its ecosystems and biodiversity. Restoring nature can help reverse biodiversity loss while also strengthening ecosystem services that society depends on — from pollination and water regulation to recreation, health and wellbeing.
But restoration also involves choices. Different measures can have different effects across places, sectors, communities and time. Some benefits may become visible only in the longer term, while costs or trade-offs may arise earlier. What works in one place may not be the best option in another.
As Europe moves from setting restoration ambitions towards implementation, decision-makers need a clearer understanding of these different effects.
We do not yet have the full picture of what restoration can deliver
The benefits and costs of nature restoration are often considered separately. Economic assessments may focus mainly on market values and direct financial costs, while important benefits such as biodiversity, pollination, health, recreation, wellbeing and cultural values can be harder to capture.
At the same time, impacts can extend beyond the location where a restoration measure is implemented. They may affect farmers, land managers, businesses, communities and ecosystems elsewhere, and these effects can change over time.
This makes it difficult to answer some fundamental questions:
Which restoration measures deliver the greatest overall benefits?
Who benefits and who may face costs?
How do impacts change over time?
Where should restoration take place?
What are the costs and trade-offs?
How do local effects interact with wider economic and environmental systems?
Europe is moving from restoration targets towards implementation
The EU Nature Restoration Regulation marks an important shift from recognising the need to restore nature towards establishing targets and implementing restoration measures across Member States. This creates new demands for evidence.
National and regional authorities, land managers and other actors involved in restoration need to make decisions about priorities, locations, measures, investments and trade-offs. These decisions increasingly require evidence that connects ecological outcomes with their wider economic and social implications.
NatuRISE will contribute to this transition by developing approaches that can help assess restoration from multiple perspectives and across different scales.
Restoration cannot be understood through a single measure of value
No single indicator can capture everything that matters when deciding whether, where or how to restore nature. A restoration measure may have a direct financial cost but generate benefits through improved crop pollination, flood regulation, recreation, health or wellbeing. Its effects may also be distributed unevenly between territories or groups.
Understanding these interactions requires bringing together different types of evidence and different ways of valuing impacts. Existing models and assessments provide important foundations, but they do not always capture the full range of benefits and costs, their distribution, or the feedbacks between ecosystems and socio-economic systems.
NatuRISE therefore aims to move beyond fragmented assessments towards a more comprehensive and connected understanding of restoration impacts.
Better evidence for better restoration decisions
NatuRISE envisions a future in which decisions about nature restoration can draw on a much broader understanding of its consequences. Decision-makers should be able to explore:
What happens if we restore?
Understand the benefits, costs and trade-offs of different measures.
Where does it matter most?
See how impacts vary across territories and ecosystems.
Who is affected?
Understand distributional effects and identify vulnerable groups.
What happens over time?
Consider both immediate effects and longer-term outcomes.
How do different impacts interact?
Connect ecological, economic and social perspectives.
How can evidence support action?
Turn complex assessments into information that can inform real decisions.
Understanding the problem is the first step
Nature restoration involves complex choices. NatuRISE aims to make those choices better informed by bringing together the evidence needed to understand benefits, costs, trade-offs and distributional effects. The project will work with stakeholders at different levels to ensure that its research responds to real policy and implementation needs.