Prioritising Europe’s Lakes for Restoration: A New Framework from FutureLakes
Lakes are vital freshwater ecosystems that support biodiversity, regulate climate processes, and provide essential benefits to society, from drinking water and recreation to flood regulation and cultural value. Yet across Europe, many lakes are under increasing pressure from pollution, habitat degradation, climate change, and competing land uses. Addressing these multiple and interacting pressures requires not only effective restoration measures, but also strategic decisions about where restoration efforts can deliver the greatest benefits.
To meet this challenge, the FutureLakes project has developed a new methodological framework to prioritise lakes for restoration at regional, national, and European scales. The framework is designed to support evidence-based decision-making by identifying lakes where restoration can achieve the highest ecological gains while also delivering wider societal benefits.
A two-layer approach to prioritisation
The FutureLakes prioritisation framework follows a two-layer approach.
First, it identifies lakes with the greatest need for restoration to support the achievement of core EU policy objectives, particularly ecological status targets under the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) and biodiversity goals under the EU Biodiversity Strategy. This ensures that prioritisation is firmly grounded in existing legal and policy commitments.
Second, the framework allows these restoration priorities to be weighted in relation to additional benefits to society, such as improvements in ecosystem services, climate resilience, recreation, and human well-being. By combining ecological need with societal value, the framework moves beyond purely biophysical assessments and enables a more holistic evaluation of restoration opportunities.
Supporting strategic decision-making and EU policy implementation
The overarching goal of the prioritisation framework is to improve WFD ecological status and freshwater biodiversity across the European Union, by directing restoration investments towards lakes that can deliver the greatest overall returns. Importantly, the framework is flexible and scalable, making it applicable across governance levels – from regional water authorities to national administrations and EU-wide assessments.
The framework has also been explicitly developed to support implementation of the EU Nature Restoration Regulation, particularly the requirement for Member States to develop National Restoration Plans. By providing a transparent and systematic method for prioritising lakes, the FutureLakes framework offers a practical tool to help Member States target restoration actions in a way that is both policy-relevant and socially meaningful.
Together, this approach represents a significant step towards more strategic, efficient, and impactful lake restoration across Europe – ensuring that limited resources are used where they can make the greatest difference for nature, people, and climate.”