Developed by a combination of 52 researchers, experts, and practitioners from 13 European countries, the European Seagrass Recommendations 2026 specify how to monitor seagrass meadows, restore degraded sites sustainably, ensure donor material supply chains are responsible, and integrate seagrass into coastal governance frameworks. They reflect a hard-won consensus on what works – and what doesn’t. 

Recommendation 1 - Safeguard existing meadows: Prioritise the protection of existing seagrass meadows to prevent further degradation and enhance their resilience against climate change threats. Restoration should complement, not replace, strong conservation measures. 

Recommendation 2 - Reduce pressures first: Identify and reduce or remove key environmental pressures where possible to create suitable conditions for recovery. Planting should be used to promote recovery only after underlying stressors have been sufficiently addressed. 

Recommendation 3 - Identify the past, present, and future potential of seagrass habitat to guide restoration: Restoration planning should be guided by socially and ecologically suitable places, and by integrated assessments of historical distribution, current meadow status, and future habitat potential to support adaptive and resilient long-term marine spatial planning.  

Recommendation 4 - Long-term monitoring is essential for adaptive management: Implement long-term monitoring of environmental conditions, restoration trials, and ecosystem functions and services to support adaptive management, improve restoration success, and demonstrate ecological and societal benefits. 

Recommendation 5 - Develop evidence-based approaches and promote ethical knowledge sharing: Develop shared, evidence-based, and accessible restoration guidance with clear and realistic success metrics; promote ethical practices; and support adaptive management through continuous knowledge exchange to guide and future-proof restoration.

Recommendation 6 - Build human capacity: Invest in both the human capacity – training and education – and the organisational and commercial infrastructure to build professional restoration capacity and improve seagrass literacy; strengthen stakeholder and community engagement through co-design; and foster cross-sector collaboration and public recognition of seagrass as critical infrastructure.

Recommendation 7 - Align governance, policy, and financing mechanisms with science for restoration: Harmonise or create new European policies and regulations to enable restoration through clear, streamlined permitting, the removal of administrative barriers, and strengthen the integration of existing and new environmental and climate frameworks. This must be supported by a substantial increase in long-term, fair, and continuous funding streams, along with novel financing mechanisms, to deliver lasting, large-scale ecological outcomes.

Recommendation 8 - Develop and optimise resilient seagrass supply chains: Develop sustainable and climate-proof donor material supply chains through ethical natural sourcing and expanded nursery capacity. Advance restoration methodologies by optimising seed quality and production, harvesting, processing, storage, planting and monitoring techniques, considering genetic aspects and develop methodologies and technologies to enable scaling.

Download the full set of recommendations here: https://zenodo.org/records/20055164. 

This article is originally by Dr Richard Lilley of The Seagrass Consortium