Prioritise and identify projects that contribute to River Basin Management Plans, and which could benefit from funding other than the Water Environment Fund, e.g. the Nature Restoration Fund, in order to restore rivers, particularly in rural environments.
Objective 5: Invest in nature
Priority Action 24. Drive increased investment in Biodiversity and Nature Restoration.
Progress has begun within strategic planning and consultation spaces around water services investment and river restoration priorities, including engagement through the current consultation on safeguarding Scotland’s water environment and the development of the next River Basin Management Plan (RBMP) cycle. However, implementation of river restoration projects explicitly linked to RBMP outcomes remains limited and patchy.
While priority catchments and pressures are increasingly well understood, there is not yet a clear, consistently applied system for prioritising and resourcing restoration projects at the scale required. Current delivery does not yet reflect the level of coordinated investment and action needed to drive measurable ecological recovery in rural river systems.
While Scotland has a strong policy and planning framework for river health through RBMPs, the translation of these plans into prioritised, funded restoration projects remains incomplete. The ongoing consultation on water environment policy and future RBMP development presents a key opportunity to strengthen ambition, but current delivery still reflects many of the structural issues identified in previous cycles.
Stakeholder responses to the Investing in and Paying for Water Services from 2027 consultation highlighted that proposed investment models risk maintaining a divide between economic objectives (such as water supply and infrastructure) and ecological outcomes, without sufficiently prioritising nature-driven restoration in priority catchments. Similarly, LINK’s Restoring Scotland’s Waters report identifies fragmented funding, unclear delivery pathways, and inconsistent implementation as ongoing barriers.
As a result, many rural rivers continue to experience degraded water quality, simplified and incised channels, loss of habitat complexity, barriers to ecological connectivity, and reduced resilience to climate pressures. Current approaches are often driven by compliance with Good Ecological Status, rather than by more ambitious, outcome-focused restoration that would rebuild ecological function and biodiversity at catchment scale.
Although delivery partners such as SEPA and Fisheries Management Scotland have identified priorities, resourcing remains uncertain and implementation is uneven across regions. Progress to date is therefore necessary but not sufficient. River restoration remains incremental and under-resourced, with limited mechanisms to ensure that individual projects collectively deliver the ecological outcomes set out in RBMPs.
Scotland now has a clear opportunity, through the next RBMP cycle, to move from planning and consultation towards a more ambitious, delivery-focused model of river restoration.
This requires a strategic framework that directly links RBMP objectives with prioritised, adequately resourced restoration projects, with project selection driven by ecological need rather than primarily by regulatory compliance. Priority should be given to catchments where restoration can deliver the greatest gains for biodiversity, resilience and ecosystem function.
A central requirement is restoring ecological connectivity, both within river channels and between rivers and their floodplains. This includes reconnecting fragmented habitats, restoring natural river processes, and enabling rivers to interact with surrounding landscapes in ways that support biodiversity, water regulation and climate resilience.
Funding mechanisms, including the Nature Restoration Fund and future water services investment, need to be more clearly aligned with these ecological outcomes, with transparent criteria that prioritise biodiversity recovery and hydromorphological improvement. Long-term resourcing and capacity across delivery partners will be essential to move from isolated projects to coordinated, catchment-scale restoration.
Monitoring frameworks must also evolve to track ecological condition and recovery, not just project delivery. This includes measuring improvements in habitat quality, connectivity, and ecosystem function over time, supported by regular reporting and publicly accessible data.
Finally, stronger coordination across sectors, including agriculture, forestry and land use planning, will be needed to ensure that river restoration is not treated as a standalone activity but as part of a wider, integrated approach to landscape-scale nature recovery.
Without this shift, rural river restoration will continue to fall short of the scale and coherence required to deliver meaningful biodiversity recovery and resilience by 2030.
River Basin Management Planning and related policies are based on improving water quality, habitat condition, and ecosystem health in Scotland’s rivers. These frameworks are supported by evidence showing that river restoration can improve fish habitat, connectivity, water quality, and biodiversity. However, current delivery is not yet consistently translating RBMP priorities into scaled, coordinated restoration projects across catchments. As highlighted in LINK analysis, many projects remain small-scale or fragmented, limiting overall ecological impact.
As a result, ecological improvements are occurring in places, but wider system recovery of rural rivers is not yet being delivered at the scale or pace needed for strong biodiversity recovery.
SEPA – River Basin Management Planning (RBMP)
Scottish Government – Water services investment consultation (2027)
Scottish Environment LINK – Restoring Scotland’s Waters report
Scottish Environment LINK – Consultation response
Maintain and seek to increase investment in nature restoration through our £65 million Nature Restoration Fund.
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