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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Conceptual and operational perspectives on ecosystem restoration options in the European Union and elsewhere

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Summary Egoh et al. (2014) prioritized areas for ecological restoration in the European Union (EU) so that Europe could cost-efficiently meet the globally agreed 15% restoration target. We identify three major deficiencies in their analysis, one conceptual and two operational, which compromise the conclusions of the prioritization. The conceptual flaw is neglect of both the magnitude of degradation and the magnitude of improvement of the ecosystem condition expected due to restoration. The first operational flaw is inclusion of inappropriately measured restoration costs into the analyses. The second is use of spatial units that are so large (10 × 10 km) that only a fraction of each unit could realistically be restored, thereby overestimating restoration gains. Synthesis and applications. The prioritization suggested by Egoh et al. (2014) runs a risk of focusing restoration efforts towards areas where the ecological improvement of restoration is the smallest. Thus, in this article, we propose that the recommendations by Egoh et al. (2014) will not help to achieve the high-level target of the Convention on Biological Diversity and EU of halting the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem services, but instead may actually compromise progress towards the target. More detailed analyses are needed before well-informed decisions about restoration prioritization can be made across the EU and elsewhere.