Note, new date!!!
22 October 2025
15:00 – 16:00 hrs EEST
Speaker: Dr Alhassan Ibrahim, James Hutton Institute, Scotland, United Kingdom
The link will be sent to all IPS members by email.
Advancing peatland restoration – one of Europe’s most valuable freshwater ecosystem strategies – requires both targeted local interventions and sector-wide transformation, where industries and communities are directly involved. The Horizon 2020 MERLIN project advances this dual approach through practical restoration across seven case studies and structured engagement with the European peat extraction sector.
Through a dedicated community of practice, MERLIN has worked with peat extraction stakeholders to build a shared understanding of sector trends, policy challenges, and emerging opportunities. A dedicated value chain analysis explored how rewetting – and, where relevant, revegetation – can be positioned as part of the value proposition for peat extraction companies serving the horticultural market, particularly through certification schemes linking site restoration to product marketing and the consumers. These insights informed the Peat Extraction Sector Strategy, which outlines a European roadmap for embedding restoration in the sector’s future.
This webinar will introduce MERLIN’s broader peatland work, highlight key findings from the value chain analysis, and present the Strategy’s five priority actions: scaling up rewetting and revegetation, strengthening after-use planning, building landscape partnerships, advancing policy frameworks, and developing viable business incentives. The webinar will conclude with reflections on insights gained through collaboration with peat extraction stakeholders, highlighting opportunities for aligning sector innovation with climate resilience and sustainable peatland management in a just transformative manner.
Biography of Dr Alhassan Ibrahim
Alhassan’s work is grounded in a strong appreciation that policy decisions around land use, freshwater, and restoration are rarely straightforward. These decisions are shaped by overlapping political, social, and institutional dynamics, often unfolding in uncertain and contested contexts. As an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist, his work is tailored to help diverse actors, including governments, businesses, researchers, and communities, navigate these complexities to support more just, inclusive, and effective transformations in freshwater landscapes.
He combines stakeholder engagement, policy analysis, and participatory tools to explore critical questions such as: whose knowledge counts? How can decisions reflect diverse interests? And what makes institutions work in complex, real-world settings? In the Horizon 2020 MERLIN project, Alhassan has served as the lead for the peat extraction sector, steering multiple engagements and delivering key outputs including the sector strategy, value chain analysis, and a briefing on sectoral trends.
