Een klimaatneutrale Europese Unie in 2050 met een duurzame economie. Dat is het doel van de Green Deal, een ambitieus programma van de Europese Commissie. Om die reden startte de EU in 2021 een onderzoeksprogramma om antwoorden te vinden op de klimaatverandering en ter bescherming van ecosystemen en biodiversiteit. WUR maakt deel uit van negen Green Deal projecten. Hoe staan die er na 2,5 jaar voor? We hebben een tussenstand van drie projecten.
In the Green Deal projects, the researchers want to tackle two challenges simultaneously: climate change and biodiversity loss. In practice, this means strengthening nature reserves so that we can better respond to the consequences of climate changes such as heat waves, forest fires, floods, and drought. Nature-based solutions play an important role in this strategy: measures that use natural processes to deal with drought and flooding, for example, while also promoting species diversity.
European Green Deal
The European Green Deal encompasses a series of policy initiatives,
including a proposal for a law for a climate-neutral European Union by 2050.
This proposal was approved in 2020, and other initiatives followed, but
recently climate and nature proposals have been withdrawn, postponed, or
weakened, including:
- The Sustainable Food System Law, part of the Farm-to-Fork strategy. Status: unknown (was supposed to be adopted by the European Commission by the end of 2023, but this did not happen).
- Regulation for the Sustainable Use of Pesticides. Status: withdrawn (after rejection by the European Parliament at the end of 2023).
- Nature Restoration Law. Status: postponed (due to insufficient support at the beginning of 2024, unclear if it will be canceled).
- Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive. Status: under review (adopted by the European Parliament at the beginning of 2024, but certain obligations and a binding timeline have been removed; the Council will vote in June).
WaterLANDS - wetlands restauration
WaterLANDS is a European research project to restore European wetlands and anticipate their adaptation to climate change. WUR has been working on this project for three years with Radboud University, Wetlands International, and European partners.
It is a multidisciplinary research project where sociologists, ecologists, economists, and artists explore how they can restore peatlands, coastal marshes, and riverine floodplains. 'The biggest challenge in the project is how to integrate the different fields of knowledge into an approach that helps managers make decisions that benefit both restoration and local communities', researchers Juul Limpens and Milena Holmgren from WUR explain. They coordinate the tasks leading to synthesise the ecological knowledge and identify the restoration options.
One of the research areas is Venice, and not just the tourist hotspot Venice but the entire coastal lagoon, 55,000 hectares in size with 120 islands. This salty coastal marsh around the city is of significant importance for the safety of Venice because it reduces the impact of the waves from the Mediterranean Sea. WaterLANDS is working on nature-based solutions to fortify this ecosystem. Such an ecological approach to restoration must convince decision-makers more familiar with engineering approaches.
'WaterLANDS embraced the challenge in an unconventional way', says Holmgren. The researchers organised an educational programme with school children involving field trips to the lagoon around Venice. They asked the children for their opinions before and after the excursion. This showed that the children felt more connected to the lagoon and became more aware of nature and natural processes after spending a whole day in direct contact with the Venice lagoon's plants, animals and sediments. They are now working on including this environmental programme in the curriculum of all schools in Venice.
This form of nature education prepares minds for sustainable flood management, Holmgren thinks, also because the children discuss the role of wetlands with their parents. 'WaterLANDS cannot stop climate change, but we can work on the local stressors and the social capital to reduce the impacts.'
