The PONDERFUL project (POND Ecosystems for Resilient Future Landscapes in a changing climate), which began at the end of 2020, came to an end last November. Its main objectives were to provide better knowledge of the diversity of ponds in Europe, so as to better protect them, but also to find out how they could serve as Nature-based Solutions (NBS), in a context of climate change.
The results of four years’ research, carried out on over 1,900 ponds, have shown that these environments provide numerous ecosystem services and Nature’s Contribution to People (NCP), and that they have immense potential as Nature-based Solutions. Various “success stories” observed at the eight demo-sites highlighted different NBS, provided by these ecosystems, to address biodiversity loss, global warming, water scarcity, flood risk or human well-being. All these results should lead to better knowledge, consideration and inclusion of these environments in public policies.
The project has also provided a number of science-based tools for stakeholders and policy-makers such as :
These documents are available in other several languages. They can be downloaded from the project website.
Various key results are also available in the form of videos, deliverables or scientific papers.
In the Agroecology and Environment research unit, researchers from ISARA and CLAS were involved in various parts of the project. Work focused mainly on a case study involving fish ponds.
This research led to a PhD thesis, defended in November 2024 by Léo GIRARD.
It showed that fish ponds provide ecosystem services other than fish production. Collectively, they are reservoirs of biodiversity, and extensive production makes it possible to reconcile these two aspects (agroecological production and biodiversity conservation).
They can also act as carbon sinks, helping to adapt to climate change. These (aquatic) agroecosystems, combined with agroecological management, have, like all the diversity of ponds studied in PONDERFUL, an important role to play in the provision of ecosystem services and as Nature-based Solutions.