Marine Ecosystem Restoration in Changing European Seas: MERCES Deliverable 6.1

Effective implementation of marine habitat restoration requires the inclusion of a governance perspective in addition to the ecological considerations of recoverability, resilience and adaptation. The governance perspective includes understanding of the interactions and interdependencies of multiple authorities and competing maritime activities (with different economic, political, social, and cultural interests), all of which operate at different governance levels, ranging from sub-national (coastal governments) to the international arena. This also necessitates acknowledging, mobilizing and using different narratives of marine restoration, and being confronted with different forms of uncertainties. The paper’s overall contribution is the synthesis of these seemingly disparate components (narratives of restoration, uncertainty in decision making, and governance arrangements) to evaluate the impact of existing (maritime and environmental) policies, the governance setting, definitions of restoration and uncertainties on the effectiveness of marine restoration projects. Such a synthesis is a necessary move toward a systematic evaluation of ways to govern and formally institutionalize marine restoration in different (multi-level) governance settings and to understand the enabling and constraining factors to implement marine restoration initiatives.