Project Overview
The Eddleston Water Project is a flood resilience and habitat restoration project near Peebles, Scotland. The project was started in 2010 primarily to reduce flood risk and restore habitats at a catchment scale, and ultimately to gather an evidence base on the effectiveness of natural flood management for wider use. Measures implemented across the 69km2 catchment include the creation of 38 new ponds, the re-meandering of some 3.5km of once-straightened river channels, 100 engineered log structures to slow excess water, and the planting of over 330,000 native trees.
While the project was predominantly funded through grants from the Scottish Government, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and a number of other funders, the project team also sold a small number of carbon credits from its native woodland creation through the Woodland Carbon Code. In February 2023, the project was chosen as a UNESCO Ecohydrology Demonstration Site, the only one in the UK.