Restoring Europe’s Lakes: Governance Complexity, Stakeholder Engagement, and Political Networks

Submission to Panel 8: Exploring Collaboration and Conflict in Environmental Governance The EU Nature Restoration Law (NRL), in force since August 2024, sets ambitious targets for ecosystem recovery across Europe, yet its implementation exposes critical governance challenges. Freshwater habitats - particularly lakes - remain a blind spot in European water governance, despite their ecological, social, and economic importance. While technological solutions and scientific diagnoses for lake restoration are well established, governance failures persist as the main barrier to success. Stakeholder engagement emerges as a decisive factor: the World Water Quality Alliance survey of lake restoration practitioners ranks inclusive participation above knowledge and resources as the single most important determinant of project outcomes. This paper investigates how governance arrangements and political networks shape restoration trajectories under the NRL, focusing on coordination problems, conflicts, and coalition-building across six European lakes: Karla (Greece), Kartuzy Lakes (Poland), Vansjø (Norway), Vesijärvi (Finland), IJssel (Netherlands), and Loch Leven (UK). Drawing on comparative data from the FutureLakes project, we show that engagement models vary widely - from centralized decision-making in Greece to co-production frameworks in Finland and the Netherlands - producing different legitimacy and conflict dynamics. Our analysis identifies three key patterns: (1) governance complexity intensifies with stakeholder diversity and competing land-use pressures; (2) institutional innovations, such as dedicated lake foundations or basin organizations, can foster trust and social capital; and (3) even high engagement does not eliminate conflicts under climate stress and spatial competition. By unpacking these dynamics, the paper argues that embedding lake-specific governance frameworks into national restoration plans and adaptive, multi-level governance strategies are needed to increase governance effectiveness under the NRL. Lessons from these cases speak directly to Panel 8’s focus on participation and policy implementation, highlighting how political networks - linking actors across scales and sectors - mediate power, legitimacy, and resource flows, ultimately making or breaking Europe’s restoration ambitions.