Barriers to ecological restoration in Europe: expert perspectives

Ecological restoration is key to counteracting anthropogenic degradation of biodiversity and to reducing disaster risk. However, there is limited knowledge of barriers hindering the wider implementation of restoration practices, despite high-level political priority to halt the loss of biodiversity. In Europe, progress on ecological restoration has been slow and insufficient to meet international agreements and comply with European Union Nature Directives. We assessed European restoration experts' perceptions on barriers to restoration in Europe, and their relative importance, through a multiple expert consultation using a Delphi process. We found that experts share a common multi-dimensional concept of ecological restoration. Experts identified a large number of barriers (33) to the advancement of ecological restoration in Europe. Major barriers pertained to the socio-economic, not the environmental, domain. The three most important being insufficient funding, conflicting interests among different stakeholders, and low political priority given to restoration. Our results emphasize the need to increase political commitment at all levels, comply with existing nature laws, and optimize the use of financial resources by increasing funds for ecological restoration and eradicate environmentally harmful subsidies. The experts also call for the integration of ecological restoration into land-use planning and facilitating stakeholders' collaboration. Our study identifies key barriers, discusses ways to overcome the main barriers to ER in Europe, and contributes knowledge to support the implementation of the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the EU 2030 Restoration Plan in particular. © 2021 The Authors. Restoration Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. on behalf of Society for Ecological Restoration.We are particularly thankful to experts participating in the Delphi process for their generosity in sharing their time and knowledge, and the European Chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SERE), Réseau d'Échanges et de Valorisation en Écologie de la Restauration (REVER), Finnish Board on Ecological Restoration (FBER), Working Group on Ecological Restoration of the Spanish Association for Terrestrial Ecology (ER-AEET), Dutch Knowledge Network for Restoration and Management of Nature (OBN), German Restoration Network (GRN), UK Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM), Portuguese Network of Ecological Restoration (RPRE), Iberian Center for River Restoration (CIREF), and European Federation of Soil Bioengineering (EFIB) for suggesting candidates to the consulting process. We appreciate the support given by BiodivERsA (project funded under the EU Horizon 2020 ERA-NET COFUND scheme), and the EKLIPSE project (European Union Horizon 2020 grant agreement 690474), and particularly by Juliette C. Young. JCS research is financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Education and Universities and European Regional Development Funds (FEDER; project COSTERA, RTI2018-095954-B-I00). PMRG research is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through FCT Investigator Program grant number IF/00059/2015, and Centro de Estudos Florestais is supported by FCT grants UID/AGR/00239/2019 and UIDB/00239/2020

A PfRH5-Based Vaccine Is Efficacious against Heterologous Strain Blood-Stage Plasmodium falciparum Infection in Aotus Monkeys

SummaryAntigenic diversity has posed a critical barrier to vaccine development against the pathogenic blood-stage infection of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. To date, only strain-specific protection has been reported by trials of such vaccines in nonhuman primates. We recently showed that P. falciparum reticulocyte binding protein homolog 5 (PfRH5), a merozoite adhesin required for erythrocyte invasion, is highly susceptible to vaccine-inducible strain-transcending parasite-neutralizing antibody. In vivo efficacy of PfRH5-based vaccines has not previously been evaluated. Here, we demonstrate that PfRH5-based vaccines can protect Aotus monkeys against a virulent vaccine-heterologous P. falciparum challenge and show that such protection can be achieved by a human-compatible vaccine formulation. Protection was associated with anti-PfRH5 antibody concentration and in vitro parasite-neutralizing activity, supporting the use of this in vitro assay to predict the in vivo efficacy of future vaccine candidates. These data suggest that PfRH5-based vaccines have potential to achieve strain-transcending efficacy in humans

Barriers to ecological restoration in Europe: expert perspectives

Ecological restoration is key to counteracting anthropogenic degradation of biodiversity and to reducing disaster risk. However, there is limited knowledge of barriers hindering the wider implementation of restoration practices, despite high‐level political priority to halt the loss of biodiversity. In Europe, progress on ecological restoration has been slow and insufficient to meet international agreements and comply with European Union Nature Directives. We assessed European restoration experts' perceptions on barriers to restoration in Europe, and their relative importance, through a multiple expert consultation using a Delphi process. We found that experts share a common multi‐dimensional concept of ecological restoration. Experts identified a large number of barriers (33) to the advancement of ecological restoration in Europe. Major barriers pertained to the socio‐economic, not the environmental, domain. The three most important being insufficient funding, conflicting interests among different stakeholders, and low political priority given to restoration. Our results emphasize the need to increase political commitment at all levels, comply with existing nature laws, and optimize the use of financial resources by increasing funds for ecological restoration and eradicate environmentally harmful subsidies. The experts also call for the integration of ecological restoration into land‐use planning and facilitating stakeholders' collaboration. Our study identifies key barriers, discusses ways to overcome the main barriers to ER in Europe, and contributes knowledge to support the implementation of the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the EU 2030 Restoration Plan in particular

Messages clés d'Alter-Net et d'Eklipse pour la stratégie post 2020 de l'Union Européenne

International audienceCette présentation est une synthèse du travail effectué par le groupe de travail Alter-Net et Eklipse pour préparer des messages clés pour la commission européenne pour sa stratégie Biodiversité post 2020

Barriers to ecological restoration in Europe:expert perspectives

Abstract Ecological restoration is key to counteracting anthropogenic degradation of biodiversity and to reducing disaster risk. However, there is limited knowledge of barriers hindering the wider implementation of restoration practices, despite high-level political priority to halt the loss of biodiversity. In Europe, progress on ecological restoration has been slow and insufficient to meet international agreements and comply with European Union Nature Directives. We assessed European restoration experts' perceptions on barriers to restoration in Europe, and their relative importance, through a multiple expert consultation using a Delphi process. We found that experts share a common multi-dimensional concept of ecological restoration. Experts identified a large number of barriers (33) to the advancement of ecological restoration in Europe. Major barriers pertained to the socio-economic, not the environmental, domain. The three most important being insufficient funding, conflicting interests among different stakeholders, and low political priority given to restoration. Our results emphasize the need to increase political commitment at all levels, comply with existing nature laws, and optimize the use of financial resources by increasing funds for ecological restoration and eradicate environmentally harmful subsidies. The experts also call for the integration of ecological restoration into land-use planning and facilitating stakeholders' collaboration. Our study identifies key barriers, discusses ways to overcome the main barriers to ER in Europe, and contributes knowledge to support the implementation of the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the EU 2030 Restoration Plan in particular