Ugandan wetlands are vital ecosystems covering approximately 13% of the country's land area and providing critical socio-economic and ecological services. Nevertheless, these ecosystems face escalating degradation from agricultural expansion, urban development, unsustainable resource extraction, and climate change impacts, threatening both biodiversity and community livelihoods. While government and donor-supported wetland restoration initiatives have increased since 2016, scaling up these efforts effectively with sustainable restoration encounters significant technical, institutional, and socio-economic constraints. Experiences and learnings from ongoing restoration practices in Uganda, such as those examined by the SURE-WET project, underscore the imperative for clearly defined, co-developed visions and objectives that explicitly recognize wetlands as integrated social-ecological systems, balancing ecological recovery with community and societal benefits. A critical lesson emerging is the necessity of genuine and sustained stakeholder participation, particularly of wetland-dependent communities, throughout all project phases – from initial planning and objective setting, through implementation and active restoration, to long-term monitoring and subsequent adaptive management of restored sites. Furthermore, evaluating restoration success requires differentiating between the completion of planned activities (as process) and the achievement of desired ecological and socio-economic outcomes, necessitating robust, yet user-friendly, monitoring frameworks. The development and institutionalization of a generic, adaptable indicator framework, encompassing both social and ecological parameters for process and outcome, presents a significant opportunity to improve planning, track progress, facilitate adaptive management, and compare performance across diverse restoration projects. These insights directly resonate with the global momentum of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, highlighting the potential for well-designed wetland restoration projects in Uganda to serve as powerful Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and contribute to Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA), thereby enhancing human well-being and socio-ecological resilience while addressing the existing challenges of achieving sustainable, scalable restoration.

Wetland Restoration, Stakeholder Participation, Social-Ecological Systems, Community Engagement, Nature-Based Solutions, Monitoring and Evaluation, Uganda