OSPAR Task S6.O1.Tx: North Sea Collaboration Opportunities

Marine and coastal ecosystems across the North Sea are facing similar challenges, including biodiversity loss, habitat degradation, climate change, and increasing pressure from human activities. At the same time, many countries are investing in nature regeneration initiatives to restore species, habitats, and ecosystem functioning.

This project was carried out for the Dutch Nature Regeneration North Sea (NN) programme to identify opportunities for international collaboration on marine and coastal nature regeneration across North Sea countries. The study combined information from interviews, survey results, literature review, and findings from the OSPAR Task S6.O1.Tx assessment. Restoration priorities, target species and habitats, barriers, enabling factors, governance approaches, and ongoing projects were compared across Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

The analysis showed considerable overlap between countries in restoration priorities, particularly for oyster reefs, seagrass meadows, coastal wetlands, fish species, and seabirds. Common barriers included long-term funding shortages, fragmented governance structures, regulatory complexity, knowledge gaps, and monitoring challenges. At the same time, many enabling factors were shared, including strong policy frameworks, dedicated funding mechanisms, scientific expertise, pilot projects, and multi-stakeholder partnerships.

In parallel, OSPAR Task S6.O1.Tx provided a comprehensive overview of national efforts to implement marine and coastal nature regeneration measures across OSPAR Contracting Parties. Through a literature review and survey, the assessment catalogued restoration projects, policy frameworks, funding mechanisms, target species and habitats, barriers, and enabling factors throughout the OSPAR region. The findings highlighted increasing investments in nature regeneration while showing differences in implementation approaches, governance arrangements, and programme maturity. Recommendations were developed to improve coordination, harmonise terminology and monitoring approaches, strengthen knowledge exchange, and facilitate collaboration between countries with similar restoration priorities.

The objective of this project was to provide the Nature Regeneration North Sea programme with an actionable framework for international collaboration. By gathering information on marine and coastal restoration efforts across North Sea and OSPAR countries, the project aimed to identify shared priorities, barriers, enabling factors, and opportunities for cross-border cooperation that can accelerate nature regeneration, biodiversity recovery, ecosystem resilience, and climate mitigation.
Program: Nature Regeneration North Sea (NN)
February – July 2026

Project dates

Netherlands

Location

Nature Regeneration North Sea (NN), EcoShape, Arcadis, Witteveen+Bos

Project lead and partners

Not applicable

Target species

Methods

This project was carried out as a desk study combined with surveys, and interviews with representatives from North Sea countries. Information was collected through literature review, survey responses from OSPAR countries, and interviews with experts and government representatives from Belgium, Denmark, England, Norway, Sweden, and Germany. The collected information was analysed to identify restoration priorities, target species and habitats, barriers, enabling factors, governance approaches, and ongoing nature regeneration initiatives across the North Sea region.

 

The project also incorporated findings from OSPAR Task S6.O1.Tx, which compiled information on national efforts to implement nature regeneration measures in coastal and marine systems across OSPAR Contracting Parties. The OSPAR assessment combined a literature review with a questionnaire distributed to OSPAR countries to gather information on restoration projects, policy frameworks, monitoring approaches, implementation barriers, enabling factors, and opportunities for collaboration.

 

The resulting datasets were compared to identify common restoration objectives, shared challenges, species and habitat overlaps, and opportunities for international collaboration that could support the Nature Regeneration North Sea programme and broader North Sea restoration ambitions.

Results

The analysis showed broad alignment between North Sea countries regarding the species and habitats targeted for restoration. Oyster reefs emerged as the most consistent restoration focus across countries, alongside seagrass meadows, coastal wetlands, salt marshes, kelp forests, fish species such as cod and salmon, and a range of seabird species. The study demonstrated that many countries face similar challenges, including funding continuity, regulatory complexity, limited monitoring data, knowledge gaps, and competing spatial claims from fisheries, offshore energy, and conservation objectives. These shared challenges create opportunities for collective learning and coordinated action.

 

The project identified concrete collaboration opportunities between the Netherlands and individual North Sea countries. Examples include learning from Germany’s mapping and monitoring initiatives, Norway’s pilot-driven restoration approach and healthy oyster populations, France’s work on ecosystem-service valuation, and England’s ReMeMaRe programme as a model for large-scale restoration coordination. Collaboration opportunities were also identified around harmonised monitoring, data exchange, shared methodologies, and joint restoration initiatives through existing international networks such as OSPAR, GNSBI, and NORA.

 

The OSPAR Task S6.O1.Tx assessment further demonstrated that countries across the OSPAR region are increasingly investing in nature regeneration through restoration projects, protected areas, monitoring programmes, and policy frameworks. Common barriers include insufficient long-term funding, limited evidence on restoration effectiveness, governance complexity, and monitoring challenges. Key enabling factors include strong policy frameworks, scientific expertise, stakeholder engagement, dedicated funding programmes, and long-term institutional commitment. Based on these findings, recommendations were developed to improve data sharing, harmonise terminology and monitoring approaches, strengthen knowledge exchange, and facilitate collaboration between countries with similar restoration priorities.

 

Download full report:

National efforts for nature regeneration – OSPAR Task S6.O1.Tx (2026)

Tips & Tricks

  • Successful scaling of marine nature restoration requires moving beyond isolated pilot projects towards long-term, programme-based approaches that combine implementation, monitoring, knowledge development, and stakeholder engagement. Several countries highlighted that limited long-term funding and insufficient monitoring remain major barriers to scaling restoration efforts.
  • Governance and partnerships are just as important as ecological interventions. Projects involving governments, NGOs, research institutions, industry, fisheries, and local communities generally benefit from stronger support, better monitoring frameworks, and greater opportunities for long-term implementation.
  • Harmonised monitoring approaches and shared indicators can significantly improve the comparability of restoration results across countries and strengthen the evidence base needed for larger-scale investments in nature regeneration.
  • Many North Sea countries are working on the same priority habitats and species, particularly oyster reefs, seagrass meadows, coastal wetlands, fish populations, and seabirds. Coordinated learning, shared methodologies, and transboundary collaboration can accelerate restoration efforts and reduce duplication of work.
  • Future restoration programmes benefit from embedding monitoring from the start, including ecological baselines, measurable success indicators, and long-term monitoring plans. Several countries reported difficulties demonstrating restoration success because monitoring was either insufficient or not continued long enough.
  • Restoration measures can become more effective when designed at ecosystem scale rather than focusing on single species or habitats. Integrated approaches can generate additional benefits for biodiversity, climate resilience, fisheries, water quality, and coastal communities.
  • Practical implementation considerations, such as sourcing biological material, restoration logistics, standardisation of methods, and long-term maintenance requirements, should be considered early in project development to support future upscaling.
  • Aligning restoration objectives with broader societal benefits such as climate adaptation, flood protection, fisheries recovery, recreation, and nature-inclusive offshore development can help attract funding, increase public support, and improve the long-term sustainability of restoration initiatives.

Let's talk

Would you like to know more about this project? Send us an email

m.kelder@derijkenoordzee.nl