The EU MERLIN project has launched its new online Academy, a hub for cutting-edge learning, resources, webinars and podcasts around freshwater restoration. The open-access Academy is designed to help support practitioners, students and policy makers in mainstreaming freshwater restoration, both in Europe and globally.
This task is ever more important following last month’s news that – after a series of political hurdles – the EU Nature Restoration Law will be adopted. The law’s aim is to restore 20% of EU’s degraded ecosystems by 2030 and all by 2050, and to restore 25,000km of free-flowing rivers across the continent.
Clearly, the time for ambitious freshwater restoration is now, and the MERLIN Academy offers a hugely valuable set of open-access resources to guide visitors through the science, financing and stakeholder engagement involved in restoration. This work has a focus on the value of nature-based solutions, which aim to use natural processes to help tackle socio-environmental challenges like climate change.
Visitors to the MERLIN Academy can sign up to a series of Learning Modules for free. The first public Module covers the economics and financing of freshwater restoration in a series of videos featuring experts on the topic, along with a series of worksheets and quizzes. Future Modules will be released from Autumn 2024 onwards.
The MERLIN Academy also hosts a vast Knowledge Centre which brings together resources around environmental restoration, nature-based solutions, governance and financing. These resources – which include websites, reports, videos, e-learning, datasets and much more – can be freely searched and accessed. The Academy also hosts the MERLIN webinars and podcasts which have been produced over the project’s lifespan so far.
“MERLIN learns a lot from close collaboration with restoration cases on the ground,” said project co-ordinator Sebastian Birk. “These experiences have shaped the design of the Academy, resulting in knowledge that is robust and actionable. Specifically, the e-learning platform with its modular course design has the potential to progressively bring in new restoration knowledge to educate future practitioners across various ecosystems within a landscape framework.”
“Developing the MERLIN Academy was quite a journey,” explained Academy development leader Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber. “From our first ideas to implementation, the process required a bit of thinking outside the scientific bubble in order to make the content understandable and accessible to a wider audience. The Learning Modules form the core to gain new knowledge in a very structured and easily digestible way, including quizzes to test what you have learned.
“The Knowledge Centre helps to find related resources about nature-based solutions and freshwater restoration, the webinars provide in-depth information on specific topics and the podcasts are just fun to listen to, an easy way to get in touch with this – sometimes difficult to understand – topic,” Schmidt-Kloiber continued. “My thanks go out to all MERLIN partners who have made this possible for their engagement and dedication.”
“Generating knowledge isn’t worth much if it does not reach the right audience,” added Academy development co-leader Franziska Wenskus. “With the MERLIN Academy, we make state-of-the-art knowledge about restoration planning, implementing and monitoring easily accessible to practitioners and managers on the ground. Drawing from the results of the MERLIN project and their longstanding professional experience, our experts teach you everything you need to know to get started with your restoration project.”
“Working on social media, I discovered that there is so much information and so many things happening at the same time,” outlined Academy technical editor Joselyn Veronica Arreaga Espin. “There are so many projects contributing their work that sometimes it is hard to keep up with all the input. The Academy offers a place where this information is gathered, making it easier to find what we are looking for. As communication is key and the world needs to know what is actually happening in our ‘small bubble’, offering the Learning Modules accomplishes this purpose. Something I really appreciate is that this tool is freely accessible, which makes education and the MERLIN knowledge inclusive for any person with an internet connection.”
Speaking about the launch of the first public Learning Module, developers Josselin Rouillard and Gerardo Anzaldua said, “This course will equip you with some essential insights to navigate new funding opportunities and identify the best fit for your restoration projects. Join the course and gain a better understanding of cost-benefit analysis, explore innovative financing mechanisms, and learn how to make a compelling case for the environmental and economic benefits of freshwater restoration.”
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