Fellow's Profile
Eve Leegwater
Fellow's Profile
Eve Leegwater
Towards Recovery at Scale: Enabling Policy and Regulation for Estuarine and Coastal Restoration
Fellowship
- Themes
- Focus
-
Improving policy and regulation to enable coastal and marine habitat restoration
- Countries
- Fellowship year
-
2026
- Locality
-
South West
Biography
I am a senior advisor in the Environment Agency's National Estuaries and Coasts team, leading work to protect and restore vital marine and coastal environments. I began my career with a degree in environmental biology and have carried out conservation research in Central and South America. Since joining the Environment Agency in 2005, I have progressed from environmental regulation to biodiversity delivery, climate change and policy roles. Today, I lead initiatives such as Restoring Meadows, Marsh and Reef (ReMeMaRe), working with partners to restore seagrass meadows, saltmarshes and native oyster reefs.
Through my work, I see the frustration of communities and practitioners keen to restore nature but held back by complex licensing and high costs. Despite national commitments, progress is slow, and current frameworks treat restoration like development, overlooking its wider public value. My Fellowship explores how policy and regulation can better enable restoration, identifying practical solutions to streamline processes, empower communities, and scale up action - supporting nature recovery and strengthening the UK's leadership in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Disclaimer
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
Disclaimer
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
