December 1, 2025, Görlitz
10 am – 18 am CET
Trainers:
Shane Grundy, Director and founder of The Bush Doctor (nsw) pty. ltd.
Shane has been restoring nature for 30 years. Starting with small erosion- and flood-control projects, his firm now designs and implements large, landscape-scale restorations. If you want to learn how to slow and redirect water uphill, make roads permeable, stop erosion and repair gullies — and how to work with natural processes to achieve lasting results — join Shane’s training.
Dr. Sergey Ivliev, Founder & CEO, Peatland Ecosystems; Founder & Board Chair, Vlinder
Sergey is a mathematician and economic geographer — the ideal background for monetizing ecosystem services. He knows carbon projects inside out, having developed and certified several from scratch. Sergey will explain how to turn the outcomes of Shane’s work into carbon credits. If you want to try your luck in the complicated world of the voluntary carbon market – learn from Sergey.
Dr. Tatiana Minayeva, Scientific Director of the Care for Ecosystems UG, and President of ABC-SDG
Tatiana is a geobotanist specializing in peatlands and wetlands, with many years’ experience in restoration planning and monitoring. In 2025 she was recognized by the Ramsar Convention as a Changemaker in a World of Wetlands. Tatiana understands the complex, multilevel dynamics of ecosystems. If you want to learn how to align natural processes for restoration and long-term self‑maintenance, take the time to learn from Tatiana.
Why this training? Introduction and Background
This year, we are in the middle of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030). There were plenty of exciting initiatives within UN programs to support ecosystem restoration. Among them, the FAO program on monitoring of ecosystem restoration as part of GBF priorities (https://www.fao.org/ecosystem-restoration-monitoring/about/gbf-target-2/en); Synthesis report “Ecosystem Restoration for People, Nature and Climate” (https://www.unep.org/resources/ecosystem-restoration-people-nature-climate); plenty of communication materials (https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/communication-materials).
We even got one real law to support restoration efforts within the western part of the European continent, even though it gets a lot of criticism. And it gets criticism because it is not green enough.
The way out of contradictions between lawyers and conservationists in setting up a legal platform for nature restoration is possibly in the economy.
What is not achieved – that is, an integration of ecosystem restoration into development, turning it into a profitable land-use practice, a part of social and economic security planning, and risk management.
Integration into the economy demands, first of all, standards.
The first step was taken by the Society for Ecological Restoration, which developed in 2024 the Standards of Practice to guide ecosystem restoration – a contribution to the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030. One of the most progressive achievements is that it is universal for all ecosystem types and promotes landscape-scale thinking and planning.
This works well when the land restoration after land use is a legal practice. And when not, the only solution is to try to market all or some of the ecosystem services.
One of the existing and well-developed markets for ecosystem services is the carbon market. The existing standards it is usually focused on a specific ecosystem type – forests, grasslands, peatlands, wetlands, mangroves etc. The landscape integrative approach is not considered in carbon projects and related methodologies at all.
However, we must move this direction. We must bring together Ecosystem Restoration concepts and practices including a landscape perspective and markets of ecosystem services, including voluntary carbon market.
In this training we will try to present three facets of the problem: ecosystem restoration practices, ecosystem restoration theory, and standardization of operations and reporting.
The training will last 6 hours and have three main substantive parts that fit described above facets, short introduction and short conclusions.
Training will have a 45-minute lunch break. Sandwiches, soup and junk food provided for offline participants. Online participants should help themselves.
10:00 – 10:10 – Juergen Nauber (ABC-SDG) House rules and introductions.
10:10 – 10:30 – Tatiana Minayeva. Key concepts and frameworks in the ecosystem restoration world. Why and when do we need ecosystem restoration.
10:30 – 12:45 – Shane Grundy. Practice of Restoration in Nature.
Shane has three 40-minute sessions with two brief technical breaks. During this time, you will learn how to find technical solutions to fix all possible changes in ecosystem structures and functions. At the end of every session 5 minutes for questions.
12:45 – 13:30 – Lunch break
13:30 – 15:30 – Sergey Ivliev. How to set up a carbon project.
Sergey has two 50 minutes sessions with 10 minutes for questions at the end of every session and one technical break. You will come through entire process from project idea to project certification and emission of credits.
15:45 – 17:45 – Tatiana Minayeva. How to make the project scientifically sound.
Tatiana has two 50 minutes sessions with 10 minutes for questions at the end of every session and one technical break. You will learn how to set up objectives for technical solutions, how to set up the target values for different parameters, how to develop predicting model and set up indicators for project monitoring and assessment.
17:45 – 18:00 – Closing remarks and feedback for participants