Within the REST-COAST project, the Wadden Sea position paper From Pilots to Policy has now been officially published.

The work was carried out in collaboration with the Lower Saxony Agency for Water Management, Coastal and Nature Conservation, Hereon (Germany), the Province of Groningen (the Netherlands), Wageningen Marine Research (the Netherlands), and Wageningen University and Research (the Netherlands).

‘From pilots to policy: upscaling sediment management strategies for climate resilience in a transboundary estuary’ shows how climate adaptation in the transboundary Ems Estuary can be scaled up from local pilot actions to long-term strategies.

It concludes that sediment management is a key lever for reducing flood risk, restoring habitats and strengthening climate resilience, and that three complementary approaches, land raising with dredged sediment, multifunctional nature-based flood defences, and habitat creation, need to be combined.

The study also highlights that stronger cross-border cooperation and harmonised governance frameworks are essential to turn pilot experience into effective, long-term policy and action.

The full publication is available here.