Reviving Europe’s Lungs: The Push for Peatland Restoration Through the European Peatlands Initiative
by Martin Vallejo, GIZ / EUKI
Despite their environmental importance, European peatlands remain highly degraded, with half of the continent’s peatland areas drained and contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. This article explores the efforts underway to protect and restore these vital ecosystems through EUKI project Building a European Peatlands Initiative, highlighting the challenges and opportunities of fostering institutional collaboration, improving data, and raising awareness across the continent.
Peatlands hold up to a third of the world’s soil carbon, despite covering only 3-4% of its land surface, which means twice the amount of carbon found in the entirety of all forest biomass. Even if crucial, the climate component of peatlands is only one of many. Wetlands like these, rich in organic matter from decaying flora and fauna, additionally play an important role for biodiversity or the hydrologic cycle. They store and filter water, create ecosystems suitable for unique plants and animals, while simultaneously contributing to flood prevention[1].
In Europe, peatlands cover an estimated 59 million hectares of which almost half are degraded. This makes our continent the second highest GHG emitter from drained peatlands at close to 600 Mt CO2e per year. Importantly, Europe is historically the highest emitter in cumulative terms owing to the prolonged drainage-based economic use of peatlands, reaching back over a thousand years. Agriculture, forestry, mining for peat extraction or fragmentation by the sheer expansion of human infrastructure has left only the smallest of portions in their natural state[1].
In view of this critical situation, the glaring lack of a dedicated European network to advance decision-making and research on peatlands might come as a surprise. It was only at the 2021 Climate Summit in Glasgow that corresponding efforts picked up steam. At COP26, a European Peatlands Initiative (EPI) was first proposed under the lead of the Irish government and the United Nations Environment Programme, winning the interest of several European countries and stakeholders[2].
With the launch of EUKI project ‘Building the European Peatlands Initiative: a strong alliance for peatland climate protection in Europe’ in November 2022, Eurosite and the Michael Succow Foundation (MSF), already present in Glasgow, gained new partners for their efforts with the European Landowners’ Organisation (ELO) and CEEweb for Biodiversity (CEEweb). In the lead-up to the final stages of their project, we interviewed the partners to ‘take the temperature’ on the current prospects for a future EPI. As this article goes to show, institutional foundations will have to be accompanied by robust data, targeted national policies, and relentless awareness-raising if the EPI wants to reach its goals – without neglecting innovative approaches to what remains a global challenge.
Institutional pillars
A neutral observer might ask themselves why the pace of institutionalization in Europe is lagging behind overt necessity. After all, there is a scientific consensus around the need to protect peatlands. Moreover, the Global Peatlands Initiative (GPI) already provides a good example of how an institutional body solely concerned with these ecosystems could look like. Unfortunately, this has not yet led to a structural process where stakeholders, governmental and non-governmental alike, jointly facilitate these intentions. “However, that doesn’t mean that the possibility [for an EPI] doesn’t exist. On the contrary, there is a strong desire for knowledge sharing among governments across Europe. Finding the right governance structure is the challenge here”, points out Harm Schoten, Director of Eurosite.
In the light of this longstanding process, the EUKI project partners have walked the talk. The exchange initiated at COP26 has been furthered by a series of workshops and networking events to bring together representatives of national governments, scientists, environmentalists, private landowners, and farmers. Special mention deserves the Bonn workshop last May. 31 governmental representatives and experts from 13 European countries came together to exchange knowledge and experiences on existing and planned national peatland strategies. The resulting Policy Brief, soon to be published, promises to gain significant momentum.
The EUKI project plays a key role in this regard, providing a space to reflect upon what governance mechanisms should regulate the functioning of an eventual EPI. One conclusion is already clear: It will have to strike a balance between political support and technical input. While the former is paramount to ensure its legitimacy and reach, an EPI without the latter would be devoid of vital and independent expertise.
Providing the data
The partners at the EUKI project know a fair share when it comes to the aforementioned technical expertise. A first of its kind Peatland Map of Europe was produced back in 2017, at the time the most accurate representation of peatland distribution across the whole of Europe[3]. Nonetheless, some deficiencies have been identified since, as well as the need to expand the mapping network. Analyses of National Inventory Submissions of EU Member States have shown that organic soils and associated emissions are incomplete and thus, more often than not, underreported[4]. Moritz Kaiser, expert for Peatland & Climate at the MSF, shared with us that new data has been collected for several European states within the EUKI project. If all goes according to plan, an updated map will be published soon, with an additional map zeroing in on the agricultural use of peatlands in the pipeline.
Bringing these cartographies up to date is ripe with structural, technical, and even political challenges. In the first category one might encounter inadequate mapping. A relatively easy point to amend if new geodata allows you to refine the actual distribution – sometimes even status – of organic soils. Some adjustments are more technical in nature, e.g. the incorporation of CH4 emissions from drainage ditches or the use of revisited Emission Factors (EF). EFs, i.e. the coefficients describing the rate at which a given activity releases GHG into the atmosphere, are however scientific approximations with built-in uncertainty ranges: “Noteworthily, there seems to be a tendency in some places to selectively use low outlier measurements to gain low EFs. We have to be careful that countries do not lower their emissions from drained peatlands on paper only by deliberately choosing EFs that are too low”, illustrates Kaiser.
National policies
One of the areas where the mapping updates are proving particularly wide-reaching is Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Many countries in CEE have considerable peatland areas, yet the data availability and public awareness has been lagging behind Western Europe in the past. The EUKI project has been able to address this gap due to the cross-country makeup of its consortium, combining previous pan-European work on peatland distribution with local knowledge and contacts for additional data from the CEE region.
A case in point in this process of mutual learning, specifically on the policy front, has been the publication of CEEweb’s report ‘Peatland-related Policies in Six Central and Eastern European Countries’ earlier this year. A key finding has been that including peatlands in wider environmental management strategies is the most common approach in CEE – instead, Germany and Estonia have dedicated national peatland strategies. Still, were national policy frameworks to see the light of day, the funding question would remain unanswered: “In all six countries assessed, EU funds represent the key funding source for peatlands, although in Germany and Estonia substantial amounts have been dedicated to peatland restoration from national funds”, analyses Eliza Óhegyi, Project Coordinator at CEEweb.
Comes national peatland policy, comes national funding? The equation may not be as simple as it seems; funding constraints are a lamented obstacle across the continent. In this vein, many fingers point in one direction: “An unexploited potential is the involvement of the private sector”, clarifies Óhegyi. One tool to harness this money could be carbon credit programs such as MoorFutures in Germany[5]. However, certification schemes have been met with little interest or outright local resistance by farmers and landowners. Many actors in the field agree on a diagnosis: continued land use is central so that the rewetting of peatlands is not seen to compromise agricultural production. Two buzzwords should be front-page in this discussion: paludiculture and awareness-raising.
Awareness
Paludiculture is the productive land use of wet and rewetted peatlands that preserves the peat soil and thereby minimizes CO2 emissions and subsidence, the downward movement of the Earth’s surface due to peatland exploitation[6]. Derived from the Latin pălūs for swamp or marsh, the associated benefits of these cultivation methods are varied and range from climate mitigation and biodiversity preservation to sustainable land use. In order to get landowners on board, spelling out the latter is key. MSF’s Moritz Kaiser is confident about the prospects of paludiculture: “It enables the cultivation of wetland crops like reed and cattail for construction, biofuels, and other industries, offering sustainable alternatives. This needs reliable financial support, like ecosystem service payments or subsidies, to make paludiculture attractive for landowners.” It bears noting that the EUKI community is not new to substitutes to drainage-based agriculture and forestry. Currently running alongside ‘Building the European Peatlands Initiative’ is a second project devoted to Dinaric Karst Peatlands for Climate Resilience, with four more completed projects dealing with the Baltics[7][8], Alpine peatlands, and the improvement of national GHG inventories for organic soils[9].
“The unawareness surrounding the challenges faced by landowners in managing peatlands sustainably and economically is a significant barrier to effective peatland conservation”, intercedes Leonor César das Neves, Policy Officer for Biodiversity at ELO. Leaving aside robust financial and technical support for a moment, these efforts will miss the target without broader awareness of paludiculture as a whole, she adds. To this end, ELO set out to produce a substantial media package ranging from sectoral manuals and webinars to a strong social media campaign as part of the EUKI project. By incorporating expert input, case studies, and recommendations, the manuals aim to offer clear, actionable advice on how to restore and protect peatlands while ensuring they remain economically viable for landowners. Younger generations have not been left out of this holistic approach. “We plan to use the hashtag #PeatlandMatters to drive the conversation on X, Instagram, and LinkedIn”, emphasizes César das Neves, and concludes: “Peatlands may remain relatively unknown to the wider public, but these initiatives are gradually closing the knowledge gap and fostering deeper engagement with the peatland restoration agenda.”
Conclusion
The climate and environmental policy discourse is plagued with futurities of uncertain contours: climate targets for 2030, net zero by 2050, figures for the decade in between – a long list ensues. Even if the movement for rewetted peatlands is part and parcel of these dynamics, the here and now is more than promising in the eyes of Jan Peters, managing director at MSF: “Already today, we are seeing a well-established pan-European exchange on peatlands between science and civil-society stakeholders”. With the institutional foundations being laid, mapping updates on course and the development of strong awareness-raising campaigns, momentum is not expected to slow down anytime soon. To implement European and national legislation and policies on peatland management in an ambitious and effective manner, national governments will be called upon to step up their commitment. All in all, the EUKI project partners are positive when gazing into the crystal ball: In ten years’ time, they hope to see a well-established European Peatlands Initiative with a permanent secretariat and clear governance structures in place.
The article is also available in Spanish:
[4] Martin and Couwenberg (2021)
[5] MoorFutures – Klimaschutz trifft Biodiversität
[6] Wichtmann and Joosten (2007)
[7] Baltic Peatland Farmers Capturing Carbon
[8] Paludiculture in the Baltic Countries
[9] INVESTIGATE – Improving National GHG Inventories for Organic Soils and Mitigation Potential