Levin Scholl’s scientific contributions

1. Diversifying sources of funding and financing is necessary to scale up freshwater ecosystem restoration and meet current EU policy targets. 2. While restoration teams recognise the need to diversify, they reveal a marked cautiousness in exploring private sources of funding and finance. 3. Barriers relate to specialised language and terminology, perceptions of reputational risk, and difficulty to articulate viable business plans for opportunities unlocked by ecosystem restoration. 4. Committed restoration teams put significant efforts in building new skills and capacity in socioeconomics, business, and finance to communicate and engage effectively with the private sector. 5. Support programmes, pilot initiatives, and guidance are needed to successfully accompany restoration teams in their diversification journey. 6. More effective enforcement of existing policies and regulations is needed to narrow the funding gap, while new ones must foster responsible private spending, lending and investment in restoration.

1. Using Value Chain Analysis to Promote NbS This report applies Value Chain Analysis (VCA) to key economic sectors within the MERLIN project, exploring how Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can be integrated into freshwater ecosystem restoration. The focus of VCA is to understand and illustrate the mechanisms through which value is created across sectors, including economic, social, and environmental dimensions. This extended approach goes beyond conventional analyses that prioritise commercial value, emphasising how NbS contribute to broader societal and ecological benefits. By examining examples from the Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS), Agriculture, Insurance, and Peat Extraction sectors in Europe, the report demonstrates that VCA is an effective tool for promoting NbS adoption. It highlights how NbS create value in ways that are both attractive to businesses and aligned with sustainability goals. 2. Synergising Economic and Ecological Gains with NbS within Value Chains Nature-based Solutions (NbS) provide an opportunity to align economic and ecological goals within value chains. By identifying sector-specific value chain challenges, integrating NbS helps make environmental resilience and economic interests mutually beneficial. Enhancing freshwater ecosystem resilience with NbS is not just corporate responsibility or green marketing but a strategy for generating commercial benefits. While initial external support may be needed to kickstart NbS, long-term gains such as reduced costs, risk mitigation, and enhanced reputation make NbS attractive for businesses, ultimately driving internal investment. 3. Leveraging Financial Support to Implement NbS across Value Chains Pro-environmental capital investments and financial incentives are crucial in driving the adoption of NbS across value chains. These supports enable key actors to gain economic advantages while implementing sustainable practices, creating win-win scenarios that make NbS integration commercially viable in the long term. However, the role of standards is equally important in ensuring consumer support for NbS. Certification schemes and labels, while helpful, often face challenges due to the proliferation of different standards, some of which lack proper accountability mechanisms. For example, schemes like the RPP (Responsibly Produced Peat) support freshwater NbS but remain largely invisible to consumers, limiting their impact. Streamlining standards and enhancing transparency can help ensure broader consumer awareness and support for NbS. 4. Enhancing Standards for NbS Integration into Value Chains Many sectoral standards need to be renewed or updated for the purpose of a more comprehensive integration of NbS, with possibilities to involve a certification scheme or consumer label issuing procedure. More up-to-date sectoral standards are considered as an institutional instrument to provide systematic solutions to include NbS into value chains, as they provide a structured framework for ensuring that NbS are implemented effectively, facilitating their adoption while offering long-term economic and environmental benefits. This is particularly important for aligning value chains with broader environmental goals. 5. Fostering Stakeholder Engagement to Maximise NbS in Value Chains The success of mainstreaming NbS hinges on collaboration among various stakeholders involved in interconnected value chains. Public agencies, private companies, NGOs, and local communities must work together to ensure that NbS are effectively integrated and that their benefits are maximised among different actors. Moreover, a systematic understanding of NbS in value chain requires also cross-sectoral cooperation and not limiting the vision within sectors. 6. Driving Innovation and Sustainability through NbS in Value Chains Ongoing research and development are necessary to further integrate NbS into sectoral value chains. On the one hand, more technical advancements are desired to improve the efficacy and efficiency of NbS. On the other hand, strengthening institutional capacities and creating platforms for knowledge sharing and collaboration will drive innovation and sustainability, ensuring that NbS can continue to enhance the value-adding process across various sectors.

Robust demonstration case-studies are needed to evaluate whether improvements in ecosystem condition are translated into improvements in ecosystem services. This research is essential for effectively scaling-up nature-based solutions across Europe and providing the evidence to support transformation agendas in society and industries, and ultimately supporting the ambitions of the European Green Deal. Clear guidance and standardised indicators help monitor the impact of freshwater and wetland restoration measures on European Green Deal goals. These monitoring indicators should include environmental indicators (e.g. for biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions and water storage capacity) as well as socio-economic indicators such as stakeholder representation, private finance mobilisation and job creation. A combined Before-After-Control-Intervention (BACI) monitoring design is recommended to provide robust evidence and attribute change to the restoration measures. Benchmark (cost or effort) and local/regional context data (e.g. land use, governance) are also needed alongside monitoring of impacts to not just measure what has happened at a site but to understand why it has happened.