Protection and restoration effectiveness: from field evidence to a practical tool for partitioners

Our societies are actively seeking solutions to address the crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. Both protection and restoration aim to support biodiversity and societal benefits. These measures may fall on the scope of the Nature-based Solutions, which address societal challenges effectively, simultaneously promoting human well-being and biodiversity net gain. The European Horizon 2020 project MaCoBioS (2020-2024) dedicated to Blue Nature-based Solutions, supports effective and integrated management and conservation strategies for marine and coastal ecosystems. One of the MaCoBioS supportive tools developed for practitioners describes the potential interventions that could be applied in a local specific context, integrating societal challenges, ecosystem services, environmental context and ecosystem-based management approaches (https://iopr.vercel.app/en/tree). Various activities may fit within the definitions of restoration and protection. Depending of the socio-environmental context, the feasibility and effectiveness of each of them can vary greatly. These activities will be presented based on a published conceptual framework and illustrated through original French case studies. In the Brusc’s lagoon, Var, France, we assessed and compared the ecological effectiveness of a panel of restorative activities in a single seascape (passive restoration, ecosystem creation, active restoration, rehabilitation in natural area and rehabilitation in exploited area). We highlighted the complementarity of these approaches, especially in balancing immediate and long-term biodiversity benefits and ecosystem services provision. For protection measures, we used a 441-sample eDNA database along the French Mediterranean coast to identify the main pillars of marine protected areas effectiveness. We identified that the level of protection (minimally, lightly, highly, fully protection) and enforcement (based on the number of guards per km²) were the most important variables affecting fish diversity. This presentation seeks to discuss the effectiveness of both restoration and protection measures, from tangible field results to applicable mainstream tools for practitioners.