Help put wetlands in the spotlight: public vote for LIFE Wetlands4Climate

Learn more about the project and vote for the LIFE Citizens’ Prize before 3 June, 19:00 CEST

LIFE Wetlands4Climate has been selected as a finalist for the LIFE Awards in the Climate category and is also competing for the LIFE Citizens’ Prize, awarded to the finalist receiving the most public votes.

This recognition highlights the growing role that wetlands can play in climate action. Often seen primarily as fragile ecosystems to protect, healthy wetlands are also powerful natural allies: they store carbon, regulate water, support biodiversity and help strengthen resilience to climate change. When degraded, however, they can lose these functions and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

LIFE Wetlands4Climate is helping demonstrate that wetland restoration and management can become a concrete climate solution. The project has developed a scientific methodology to measure and quantify avoided greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the restoration and management of Mediterranean wetlands.

Through DIMFE this work is now being taken one step further in the Marjal dels Moros wetland, in Spain, together with Fundación Global Nature and the University of Valencia.

Building on the methodology developed through LIFE Wetlands4Climate, the DIMFE-supported project aims to apply this approach directly in the field. It combines ecological restoration, long-term monitoring of avoided greenhouse gas emissions, and the exploration of a sustainable financing mechanism through carbon credits.

Over a 10-year period, the management of the Marjal dels Moros is expected to mitigate around 1,500 tonnes of CO₂. The project is also testing how avoided emissions could, in the future, generate new sources of long-term funding for wetland restoration and management.

This is what makes the approach particularly innovative: it connects restoration, science and finance in a way that could be replicated in other Mediterranean wetlands.

By turning measurable climate benefits into potential financial value, the project offers a promising model to support the long-term conservation and restoration of freshwater ecosystems. For DIMFE, this project reflects the importance of investing in practical, field-based solutions that address biodiversity loss, climate change and the chronic underfunding of freshwater ecosystems.

A vote for LIFE Wetlands4Climate is a vote for bringing wetlands into the climate conversation: not as forgotten landscapes, but as active, measurable and financeable climate solutions.