Today, more than 300 participants joined the virtual launch of the new open-access Special Issue “Wetlands in a Changing Climate: Restoring Coasts and Floodplains”, published in the scientific journal Nature Conservation.
The Special Issue represents a remarkable international collaboration, bringing together 15 peer-reviewed articles authored by over 100 researchers from 16 countries. It offers a rich interdisciplinary resource addressing one of the most urgent challenges of our time: how to protect and restore wetlands as key ecosystems for biodiversity, climate resilience, and human well-being.
Key messages from the launch event
Speakers highlighted the dramatic scale and urgency of wetland loss. Since the 1970s, the world has lost an estimated 400 million hectares of wetlands — an area comparable in size to India. As repeatedly emphasized during the discussion, protecting remaining wetlands is far more cost-effective than attempting to restore them once they are lost.
At the same time, the panel made clear that wetland restoration is not only a technical or ecological task. It is also a social, political, and governance challenge, requiring long-term cooperation, public support, and cross-sectoral solutions.
Wetlands were also framed as landscapes of cultural and societal value. As Flore Lafaye de Micheaux from the Convention on Wetlands noted during the event:
“Investing in wetlands is an investment in our future.”
This perspective was echoed by Dr. Mathias Scholz (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ), who stressed that:
“Wetland restoration involves human–nature relationships, and wetlands should be treated as social-ecological systems.”
Danube perspectives featured in the Special Issue
The WILDisland project and the work of the DANUBEPARKS Association are featured in the Special Issue through the article “Bridging protected areas along the Danube”. The paper illustrates how transboundary cooperation among protected areas supports ecological connectivity and long-term conservation along Europe’s most international river.
Drawing on the experience of the DANUBEPARKS network, the article presents WILDisland as a practical, process-based approach that uses Danube islands as indicators of healthy riparian dynamics and functioning floodplain ecosystems — offering a transferable model for large-river wetland restoration.
The Special Issue “Wetlands in a Changing Climate: Restoring Coasts and Floodplains” brings together cutting-edge insights from wetland science, policy, and practice in a single open-access volume. It was developed within the framework of the BioClim-Wetlands project, commissioned by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) with funding from the Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMUKN), and implemented by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), iDiv, and adelphi. The initiative supports the implementation of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and was developed in cooperation with the ENCA Interest Group on Climate Change.
The full Special Issue is freely available online and provides valuable inspiration for researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers working on wetland conservation and climate adaptation.
