Rethinking marine restoration permitting to urgently advance efforts

Marine biodiversity is rapidly declining, necessitating global political and financial solutions to prioritize habitat restoration in a “blue revolution.” However, marine and coastal restoration faces major technical, logistical, and resource challenges that are exacerbated by climate change, which must be urgently addressed. Unlike terrestrial restoration, marine efforts lack a long history or well-established methods, resulting in potentially high failure rates and a pressing need for innovation. As scientists and practitioners, we argue that scaling marine and coastal restoration requires policy reform, scientific advancement, and more adaptive regulatory frameworks. Current approaches are constrained by unrealistic ecological baselines and outdated assumptions about environmental stability. Licensing must move beyond recreating past habitats and instead support resilient ecosystems, ecological connectivity, and future colonization pathways. We need to rethink restoration for a changing world, guided by flexible systems that embrace uncertainty, integrate new technologies, and prioritize long-term coastal resilience over short-term fixes.