The webinar Session 5 “From Policy to practice: Unlocking Wetland restoration through Markets, Regulation and Communities” took place on 21 April 2026 from 10:00 – 11:30 CEST.
This time our our presentations and experts were:
- Financing peatland restoration through high-integrity nature markets in Europe – Mark Reed (WET HORIZONS) is a Professor of Rural Entrepreneurship and Research Centre Director at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), and Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds and Birmingham City University. He is Research Lead for the IUCN UK Peatland Programme and co-chair of UNEP’s Global Peatland Initiative Research Working Group, with advisory roles across UK governments on just transition, natural capital investment and peatlands. He has experience creating and running voluntary carbon markets, as the original architect of the Peatland Code and lead author for the Saltmarsh Code, and the British Standards Institute’s carbon standard
- Nature Restoration Regulation: The political mandate for the restoration of wetlands in Europe – on knowledge, barriers, and enablers – Jan Peters and Emmi Haltia (ALFAwetlands). Jan Peters is a landscape ecologist by training, acts as managing director at Michael Succow Foundation, Partner in the Greifswald Mire Centre. His work focuses on peatlands and climate change with main expertise on policy analysis and advocacy, peatland management strategies incl. paludiculture and stakeholder co-creation processes. He holds rich experiences in international projects on climate change mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity conservation connected to peatlands in Europe (e.g. Germany, Baltic States), Asia, Africa, and South America. Additionally, he is chair of the board of Wetlands International European Association. Emmi Haltia is a Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). Her research focuses on forest policy and economics, with particular emphasis on forest owner and farmer behavior, policy instruments and incentives for enhancing the provision of ecosystem services, and the monetary valuation of ecosystem services related to forests, agriculture, and peatlands.
- From Regulation to Recovery: Policy-Guidance for Scaling Wetland Restoration in Europe – Caspar Verwer (REWET) is an ecologist and senior project leader at IUCN National Committee of The Netherlands, as well as the former researcher at Wageningen University and Research Center, where he studied the climate and biodiversity impacts of the loss of tropical peat swamp forests in Southeast Asia. For IUCN NL, he has worked supporting local conservation projects across the globe and is currently also involved in advisory services related to the European Nature Restoration Regulation
- Governing the Tide: A Policy Roadmap for Europe’s Coastal Wetlands – Maria Del Mar Otero Villanueva (RESTORE4Cs) is a Senior Specialist in Nature Based Solutions and and Marine Conservation from the European Topic Center-University of Malaga. A coastal and marine expert on numerous international and national projects and initiatives across the Mediterranean, EU and Asia generating and facilitating knowledge transfer, developing capacity building, networking and delivering policy outreach on topics such as adaptation and mitigation to climate change, coastal wetlands, and marine biodiversity.
If you missed our previous four sessions, find more details here: