METHODOLOGY
One of the key barriers to an effective protection and restoration of freshwater ecosystems, including natural lakes, is the fragmented and short-term solutions proposed at individual sites. What they fail to consider is the need for a large-scale approach when addressing the numerous environmental, climate, social and economic pressures that these ecosystems are usually facing. Another problem is the lack of local stakeholder engagement, with projects being done top-down, without consulting and discussing with regional actors.
EUROLakes adopts a holistic methodology leveraging the innovative, science-based and practical 4 Returns Framework, which views at ecosystem challenges from a broader, basin-wide perspective.
The 4 Returns Framework of Landscape Restoration
A guiding tool for natural lakes holistic protection and restoration
The 4RF is a practical methodology looking for enduring solutions at the landscape level. EUROLakes builds on existing regional measures by proposing a participatory community based-approach, essential to the 4RF, which considers various and even competing stakeholder interests and needs when developing integrated P&R solutions. Key to the Framework is the long-term vision, which EUROLakes keeps at its core, designing approaches that will have an impact well beyond the duration of the project, thus meeting and going beyond the Mission’s 2030 objective.
The 4RF is designed to ensure that landscape restoration efforts generate sustainable benefits across multiple dimensions though the integration of ecological, social, and economic factors in a holistic approach. By balancing diverse stakeholder interests, the framework fosters a mosaic of management strategies that deliver 4 returns:
Inspiration
Returns
Returns
Returns
This is achieved through a structured process incorporating 5 elements fostering collaboration, planning, implementation and learning:
- Landscape Partnership – Bringing together rights-holders and stakeholders on a common platform for dialogue and joint action.
- Shared Understanding – Facilitating an exchange of information and perspectives discussion to develop a common ground of shared understanding of the landscape, its challenges and opportunities, and of each other.
- Landscape Vision & Collaborative Planning – Using this shared understanding to co-develop a strategic vision and agreed action plan.
- Taking Action – Implementing the plan while ensuring financial viability, transparency and commitment to the set collaborative goals.
- Monitoring & Learning – Tracking progress, adapting to new findings and changing conditions, and ensuring accountability for longstanding impact.
The framework is applied within a multifunctional landscape, structured into three interdependent zones and follows a minimum 20-year perspective to ensure meaningful and lasting transformation. It is being continuously refined with the development of best practices tools and guides to support its practical application in degraded landscapes. EUROLakes will fully leverage these resources to implement effective, scalable and sustainable restoration approaches, ensuring a legacy of the project outcomes well beyond its duration.
Communities of practice
to co-develop and demonstrate novel and integrated protection and restoration solutions
An inclusive, stewardship approach for stakeholders’ return of inspiration is central for EUROlakes. It aims to engage various actors with initially competing interests in working together towards achieving common goals, such as co-development and application of specific strategies and plans for protecting and restoring the natural lake ecosystems of the 3 demonstration areas: lakes Vico, Bistret and Dümmer.
Participatory Integrated Community-Based Approach (PICBA)
engaging different stakeholders in a collaborative process of addressing environmental, ecological and socio-economic challenges of each demo lake area
strong emphasis on involving local communities, residents and stakeholders throughout the restoration process
fostering a sense of ownership and commitment to a common cause by considering local communities’ knowledge, values and concerns
embracing adaptive management, allowing for flexibility and adjustments based on feedback, monitoring data and changing circumstances, ensuring that strategies remain effective over time.
PICBA smoothly overlaps with the 4RF’s 5 elements process through
careful stakeholder mapping and continuous engagement with a range of groups (landscape partnership)
stakeholders engagement accounting for the full range of needs and desires of stakeholders, relating to their landscape (shared understanding)
understanding each other’s motivations and limits, building fundamental trust, allowing for increased problem solving efficiency in later stages (shared understanding)
reaching a vision shared by people to address a core problem (landscape vision and collaborative planning)
plans’ implementation maintains collaborative commitments and transparency (taking action)
paving the way to subsequent rounds of dialogue (monitoring and learning)
Participatory Multi-Criteria Analysis (PMCA)
Creating sustainable management strategies for delivering positive outcomes for the communities by obtaining the 4 different types of returns
addresses the potential trade-offs through the analysis of alternative scenarios
provides for different short- and long-term scenario comparison
assess local and societal benefits and costs and obtains insight into the prospects that the communities have for their future.
PMCA is an invaluable supplementary instrument for enhancing the comprehension of the 4 Returns within various 3-zone scenarios. It excels in generating a 4 Returns score that facilitates the contrasting of compromise stemming from distinct configurations of the 3-zone scenarios.
Key components and elements of the three approaches
Commonalities among the approaches and areas earmarked for integration
Innovative Integrated Modelling
for Sustainable Lake Management
EUROLakes is advancing the development of an Integrated Water Modelling System (IWMS) to tackle critical environmental challenges facing lakes, including water scarcity, quality degradation and biodiversity loss. By combining cutting-edge water system models (WSM) and impact models (IMs), this approach enables the creation of digital twins – virtual representations of lake ecosystems – to simulate and assess the effects of climate change, human activities and water management strategies.
Unlike conventional methods, the IWMS goes beyond standard environmental flow requirements, integrating biodiversity considerations to evaluate how water availability and quality impact species and habitats. Stakeholder engagement plays a crucial role in shaping the framework, ensuring that adaptation measures are both scientifically robust and socially relevant. This innovative methodology will support well-informed decision-making for sustainable lake management across Europe.
The hydro-economic model (ECHO) is a bottom-up, large-scale model that identifies the optimal combination of water management options to satisfy sectoral water demands such as domestic and industrial irrigation, across sub-basins within river basins. In EUROLakes, ECHO will be set up to assess the cost and benefits of water management options.
Valuing Ecosystem Services for Sustainable Lake Restoration
To support long-term socio-economic transitions in lake restoration, EUROLakes integrates ecosystem service valuation and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to identify sustainable financing opportunities. By assigning monetary values to the benefits lakes provide – such as water quality, biodiversity conservation, and flood regulation – this approach helps attract funding and guide decision-making. The CEA framework systematically assesses restoration strategies by comparing their costs to their effectiveness in achieving environmental objectives. This process allows for prioritizing the most efficient and impactful strategies so that the allocation of resources can ensure sustainable lake management.
EUROLakes also promotes capacity building in ecosystem service valuation through trainings the project is going to conduct. Their objective is to equip stakeholders with the skills needed to assess the economic value of lakes’ benefits.
