Integrated Protection and Restoration Approaches for Natural Lake Ecosystems (EUROLakes)

EUROLakes seeks to propose an innovative, holistic and science-based approach to safeguarding and restoring European natural lakes and their ecosystems.

Human activities exert significant pressure on European lakes, leading to water over-extraction, pollution, eutrophication, and hydro-morphological changes. Climate change further intensifies these stresses.

Healthy lake ecosystems can enhance resilience to climate shocks for both people and nature. However, many restoration efforts remain fragmented, overlooking basin-wide interconnections and the needs of local communities.

The EUROLakes project addresses these challenges through an innovative, science-driven, and holistic strategy for lake protection and restoration. By considering entire landscapes and engaging diverse stakeholders, it aims to foster resilient lake ecosystems that support biodiversity, climate adaptation, and sustainable livelihoods.

Objectives

• Design and develop integrated and replicable landscape approaches for the protection and restoration of selected natural lake ecosystems in Italy, Romania and Germany, using a participatory, stakeholder engagement approach, demonstrating multi-benefit policy solutions for freshwater ecosystems.
• Demonstrate, monitor, assess and adapt the designed site-specific set of measures in each of the 3 natural lake demonstration areas.
• Enable the long-term socio-economic transition for lake restoration through the delivery of trainings on ecosystem services’ valuation and identification of sustainable financing opportunities at landscape-scale.
• Implement advanced modelling techniques to simulate the impact of selected protection and restoration approaches on lake ecosystems.
• Support the replication and scale-up of the demonstrated solutions by local and regional authorities, defined by an open call.
• Support policy and decision makers to foster implementation, replication and upscaling that enhances the successful delivery of the European Green Deal.

Demonstration Sites

Expected Outcomes

• A multi-stakeholder platform facilitating an Integrated participatory community-based approach for sharing insights and long-term management of each lake.
• Project methodology aligned with the 4 Returns Framework (4RF)
• Local communities of practice – well-informed, actively engaged and empowered to participate in the decision-making process regarding their lakes.
• Actionable lake Protection and Restoration (P&R) strategies – context-specific and stakeholder informed, accounting for ecological health, cultural significance, economic viability and social well-being.
• Adaptable implementation plans, guiding the restoration while allowing for continuous optimization, driven by data and stakeholders’ feedback.
• A comprehensive economic valuation of the ecosystem services provided to society and to nature at the lake demo sites.
• A set of financing opportunities to support lake ecosystem restoration at landscape scale.
• Training materials for economic transition, to include  the role of green finance and private investment to support lake restoration activities at landscape level.
• Action plans and roadmaps on the implemented solutions to support organizations in developing replication projects in other regions.
• A comprehensive economic valuation of the ecosystem services provided to society and to nature at the lake demo sites.
• Policy recommendations to support enhanced policy implementation for lake landscapes as means of achieving multi-benefit Green Deal objectives.
• A set of financing opportunities to support lake ecosystem restoration at landscape scale.
• An open-source data modelling framework including water quantity, water quality, biodiversity and economics.
• Digital twins platform to develop and test management strategies for improved water quality & biodiversity, and predict the impact of changes to each lake ecosystem.
• Data management guidelines, procedures and controls

IIASA Project Team

IIASA is leading Work Package 2:  Modelling and Digital Twin Demonstrations

IIASA applies advanced modelling techniques in the case study areas for: impact assessment, informing socio-economic transitions and climate change impacts.

IIASA also leads the development of visualization tools to demonstrate effectiveness of management options for improving the ecological status of lakes in the case study sites.

IIASA is also contributing to the following work:

• WP1: co-development of protection and restoration (P&R) strategies for each case study lake site
• WP3: defining evaluation criteria for measuring the effectiveness of conservation efforts and supports the selection of appropriate indicators
• WP4:  developing training materials for green economic transitions at the landscape scale and supports stakeholder capacity building.
• WP5:  selecting replicators using the 4 Returns Framework (4R) methodology for habitat restoration, as well as synthesizing lessons and best practices to improve the 4R approach.

EUROLakes Project Team

IIASA models being used in this project