This policy brief explains the importance of greenhouse gas emissions from organic soils, describes recent policy frameworks, discusses weaknesses in the National Inventory Submissions of EU countries, and provides recommendations to improve reporting. The publications is a result of the EUKI project on Paludiculture.
(c)pixabay.comINVESTIGATE – Improving National GHG Inventories for Organic Soils and Mitigation Potential
(c)pixabay.comINVESTIGATE will set up a consortium of relevant partners (European partners from research and implementing institutions) and conduct the network and capacity building for knowledge transfer on improving national GHG inventories for organic soils in different European countries. INVESTIGATE will set up a consortium of relevant partners (European partners from research and implementing institutions) and conduct the network and capacity building for knowledge transfer on improving national GHG inventories for organic soils in different European countries. The GHG mitigation potentials from drained organic soils are little perceived. INVESTIGATE will tackle scientific and technical issues with respect to reporting GHG emissions and prepare the integration and application of innovative outcomes and new technologies in national GHG inventories. The project will enhance expertise sharing and cross-border dialogue between UNFCCC reporting bodies and leading peatland scientists within and between strategically selected EU countries. Cooperation with regard to GHG accounting and emission reductions from rewetting will be fostered within the entire EU. Photo: pixabay.com Organic soils (including peatlands) on only 3% of the global land area contain more carbon than the entire forest biomass. If drained, the organic soil material is oxidized and released as GHGs to the atmosphere. In Europe, c. 275,000 km² of organic soils are drained. The European Union (EU) is, after Indonesia, responsible for the largest peatland emissions worldwide. In the Nordic and Baltic states, drained peatlands account for 25% of all national anthropogenic emissions. In spite of this importance, organic soils are insufficiently reported in National Inventory Submissions (NIS), especially because of large uncertainties with respect to activity (area) data and inadequate or unavailable emission factors, especially of specific mitigation measures. Furthermore, organic soil emissions remain unrecognized in climate policies in case of undifferentiated consideration of the land sector, where forest biomass sinks ‘compensate’ for organic soil sources. The split reporting of agricultural emissions over the sectors ‘Agriculture’ and ‘Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF)’ obscures that CO2 emissions from organic soils, i.e. from a minor part of all agriculture land, are of the same size as CH4 emissions from all animal husbandry and N2O emissions from all fertilization.
Project
Background
Project information
Updated: March 2019
Countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Romania
Project duration: 11/17 - 10/18
Funding: 116,002 €
Target groups: Governments, NGOs, Research Institutes
Implementing organisation:
DUENE - partner in the Greifswald Mire Centre
Project Partners:
Latvian State Forest Research Institute
Website:
greifswaldmoor.de/glob...
EUKI
The European Climate Initiative (EUKI):
Potsdamer Platz 10,
10117 Berlin – Deutschland
Tel.: +49 (0)30 338424 570
info∂euki.de
The European Climate Initiative (EUKI):
This project is part of the European Climate Initiative (EUKI) of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). It is the overarching goal of the EUKI to foster climate cooperation within the European Union (EU) in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
For more information on the EUKI: www.euki.de
Gábor Kosár 
pixabay.com
Andreas Haberl