EcoAdvance · Assessing and Consolidating Recent Advances on Freshwater Ecosystem Restoration

The alarming state of freshwater ecosystems today: Freshwater ecosystems degraded due to barriers / other morphological changes; loss of wetlands / floodplains; over abstraction of surface / ground waters; land management that reduces infiltration / generates pollution!Millions of euros and hours in ecosystem restoration works have made improvements, yet not stemmed the tide of biodiversity loss. The overwhelming complexity and diversity of approaches, the sheer mass of sometimes contradictory data, the frighteningly heavy toll that failures take on public perception of the potential for Europe to succeed, the lack of media understanding of the challenges and our potential to deal with them – all of these demand a multi-pronged, country-by country campaign to consolidate recent scientific advances and innovations and to train the media to communicate them and the evidence that Europe can indeed halt biodiversity loss. EcoAdvance will co-create, through broad consultations and crowdsourcing, a user-friendly Prone2Success Checklist cataloguing the climate, environmental, economic, scientific, technological and human factors, country by country, that can make a difference and how to duplicate them. EcoAdvance will consolidate recent scientific advances, drive media messaging and put a persuasive human face on freshwater ecosystem restoration successes - all from the perspectives of the people who did them, pursued, supported, tested, modified, demonstrated or evaluated them. By identifying and showcasing successful people, science and solutions that are “bending the curve”, EcoAdvance will bring guidance from personal journeys to support current leaders, scientists and decisionmakers who face some of the same challenges and dilemmas the successful have already navigated, as they try to figure out: Will this work? Is it worth the money, time and effort? Is it the right thing to do for our community and our circumstances?