“We stand at a major crossroads right now in terms of what we do to save these precious habitats – and the future of our societies.”
This summer’s heatwaves have drained Europe’s rivers and parched its soils. But beneath the surface lies a powerful solution: rewetting our wetlands.
In our final WET HORIZONS video, The Wetland Comeback: Europe’s Race to Save its Wetlands, we travel across the continent to meet and learn about the scientists, farmers, and policymakers turning degraded land back into living, breathing ecosystems.
Press Release
This summer’s heatwaves have depleted water supplies throughout Europe. Rivers such as the Rhine and Thames have reached their lowest levels in decades, and crops throughout the continent are shrivelling in the parched soil.
Europe’s wetlands and peatlands have undeveloped potential to prevent these effects. They can mitigate droughts by slowly releasing their water, and peatlands store significantly more carbon than all of the continent’s forests.
But less than 20 % of these vital ecosystems in Europe remain intact. Many have been drained for agriculture and development. The solution in principle is simple: put the water back. For example in April 2026, the German Ministry for the Environment unveiled a funding program to rewet 90000 hectares of land in Germany while enabling sustainable agriculture and forestry use.
Policymakers and landowners still need guidance on how – and where – to rewet these lands. Researchers of the European project WET HORIZONS developed tools to enhance protection and restoration of wetlands.
“WET HORIZONS will help decision makers directly to tell them if they do the restoration compared to not doing anything, how much emissions they can reduce and biodiversity they can bring back, and how that could be accepted by the citizens and by the society,” said Shubiao Wu of Aarhus University in Denmark. He is the project coordinator of WET HORIZONS.
These tools developed in the project are based on a first-of-its-kind database the researchers built. “The intention really was to combine all the knowledge into one place and allow people […] to see if they wanted to make a decision that could lead to rewetting, whether it would benefit biodiversity or change the financial equation or the carbon benefits of a certain decision,” says Dr Rebekka Artz, research leader at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland.
For some landowners such as farmers, carbon credits or other benefits are the deciding factor in whether they stick to traditional farming or switch to rewetting. These tools provide an efficient way to help farmers make that decision.
“In practice they could be out there in the field, grab their mobile phone and use the app and produce different scenarios; what would happen to their piece of land and what would be the cost for doing the rewetting,” says Dr Lorenzo Pugliese of Aarhus University, the principal investigator of WET HORIZONS.
In the end, rewetting doesn’t just benefit the wetland itself. Done well, it pays out to several groups at once.
“I think we stand at a major crossroads right now in terms of what we do to save these precious habitats – and the future of our societies given how critical nature is to climate mitigation and the survival of our way of life,” says Prof Reed.
The press package “The Wetland Comeback: Europe’s Race to Save its Wetlands” includes the following broadcast-quality video footage. All footage is free to use, remix and broadcast at no cost.
- Trailer
- B-roll
- Script
- Interviews
- Dr Rebekka Artz, Research Leader, The James Hutton Institute
- Prof Shubiao Wu, Associate Professor at Aarhus University and Project Coordinator WET HORIZONS
- Prof Mark Reed, Senior Researcher, Scotland’s Rural College
- Dr Lorenzo Pugliese, Principal Investigator WET HORIZONS
- Thomas Steins, Project Manager Jordanshof
- Pictures
For press inquiries please contact cb@esci.eu