• Nature

Restoring Europe’s wetlands

Partners: The REWET partnership

Date: 2022 – 2026

Locations: Spain, Austria, Netherlands, Finland, Belgium, Estonia, Italy, Germany and Portugal

At Bax, we are collaborating with a consortium of 18 partners on the Horizon Europe project REWET. Our shared mission is to advance the sustainable restoration and conservation of terrestrial wetlands – minimising emissions and maximising carbon uptake. Bax runs an accelerator programme and an innovation observatory to identify and develop business cases and financial models for wetland restoration.

Challenge

Wetland areas currently store an impressive 33% of the world’s terrestrial carbon, despite only covering 7% of the Earth’s surface. More than 50% of wetlands have been lost since 1900, leading to significant GHG emissions and the loss of valuable ecosystem services.

Approach

The REWET project is developing 7 open labs for wetland restoration. Our Nature & Agriculture team at Bax runs the REWET Acceleration Programme, where we conduct multi-stakeholder workshops and interviews and identify promising innovations (technologies, business models & social innovation). The aim is to develop business models that will bring the most important frontline practitioners – farmers – along for Europe’s most ambitious attempt to bring wetlands ecosystems back to health.

Impact

The project will provide a thorough understanding of the complexity inherent to the management, conservation, and restoration of wetland ecosystems. REWET will identify the best restoration strategies to maximise carbon storage capacity and reduce the GHG emissions of wetlands, considering their climate mitigation service.

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open labs
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For farmers to continue making a decent living while restoring peatlands, they need certainty and political support. We need to incentivise new ways to sustainably work with the land. That’s the aim of the Acceleration Programme – to investigate robust business models with reliable income streams for farmers.

– Lisa Wiatschka, Innovation Consultant

Project team

Pere Giralt
Innovation Consultant
Nature
Lisa Wiatschka
Innovation Consultant
Nature
Caitlin Ball
Communications Consultant
Nature
Urban
Max Meijer
Innovation Consultant
Nature

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