European habitats need to be restored

Table of Content:

Key messages

Most European habitats protected under the EU Habitats Directive need urgent and large-scale restoration measures to avoid further deterioration and revert losses from the recent past.

Habitats from some ecosystems require more significant restoration efforts, e.g., those related to agriculture and grazing, forests, and freshwater systems.

Large-scale restoration of protected habitats will require changes in several key systems, particularly the food, energy and transport systems.

Synergies with climate change mitigation and adaption measures are fundamental to restore and maintain habitats in good condition.

Member States will have to step-up their knowledge on the different ecosystems and fill in the numerous data gaps.

European habitats need urgent and extensive restoration

Despite many efforts over the past decades, European ecosystems continue to deteriorate at an alarming rate. The results of the latest ‘State of Nature’ assessment by the EEA clearly indicates that most of the 232 habitat types protected under the EU Habitats Directive experience ongoing deterioration and extirpation [1].

Global assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) further came, among others, to the following conclusions in their latest assessments [2],[3].

Habitat condition reported for European habitats

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The EU has therefore committed to an ambitious restoration agenda under its EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, which includes a legally binding Nature Restoration Regulation.

To estimate the scale and priorities of future restoration activities, the EEA supported the European Commission with the baseline work for the impact assessment of the restoration law. For this purpose, estimations of surface areas in need of restoration were made for different habitat groups, based on habitats from Annex I of the Habitats Directive.

The analysis is based on the Member States’ reporting 2013-2018 under Article 17 of the Habitats Directiveand includes two main components:

The additional area of habitats that need to be recreated (e.g. wetland habitat from a drained agricultural field)
The area of existing habitats that is degraded and needs to be improved (e.g. an overgrazed grassland with too much nitrogen in the soil and a reduced floristic composition)

Restoration of the Annex I habitats is also an important contribution to global ecosystem restoration targets. With this perspective, the Annex I habitats were grouped according to their affiliation to main EU’s ecosystem types that are based on their ecological characteristics and the restoration measures they require.

In all cases, the calculated restoration needs are most certainly considerably higher since several Member States did not provide enough information in their reports to allow a more realistic estimation.

The following pages thus give a comprehensive overview on key results of the assessment on EU restoration needs and, in addition, provide insights into the predominant pressures for the different habitats that need to be addressed via restoration such measures as well as with additional action targeting the source of impact. The analysis of pressures is also based on the results of the Member States’ reporting from 2013-2018.

References

[1] EEA web page on ‘State of nature in Europe: a health check’ https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/biodiversity/state-of-nature-in-the-eu

[2] IPBES (2018): Summary for policymakers of the regional assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services for Europe and Central. Asia of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. M. Fischer, M. Rounsevell, A. Torre-Marin Rando, A. Mader, A. Church, M. Elbakidze, V. Elias, T. Hahn, P.A. Harrison, J. Hauck, B. Martín-López, I. Ring, C. Sandström, I. Sousa Pinto, P. Visconti, N.E. Zimmermann and M. Christie (eds.). IPBES secretariat, Bonn, Germany. 48 pages.

[3] IPCC, 2018: Summary for Policymakers. In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, pp. 3-24. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157940.001.