The new European Nature Restoration Law: an opportunity for Spain's ecosystems

The European Union has approved the first Nature Restoration Law at continental scale. This regulation sets binding targets to recover degraded ecosystems by 2050, including forests, rivers, wetlands, agricultural areas and marine ecosystems.

For Spain, the law represents both a challenge and a great opportunity. The country hosts enormous habitat diversity, but many of them are fragmented, polluted or subject to increasing pressure from climate change and rural abandonment.

In the coming years it will be necessary to decide which areas are prioritized: restoration of boxed rivers, recovery of mature forests, protection of key wetlands for migratory birds or improvement of seabeds damaged by trawling, among other examples.

The law also focuses on cities, promoting the creation of more green areas, urban ecological corridors and nature-based solutions to reduce extreme heat and flooding. This can transform the way we design neighborhoods, parks and public spaces.

If applied with ambition and good planning, Nature Restoration will not only benefit fauna and flora, but can also generate green employment, improve water and air quality, and make our landscapes more resilient to fires and droughts.

At AtlasFauna we will explain how this law is implemented in Spain and what restoration projects emerge in different regions: from coasts and mountains to dehesas, marshes and cities.