Peatland Must Be Wet

Peatlands contain more carbon than the entire global forest biomass, but their importance has long been overlooked. Currently drained peatlands (on 0.4% of the world’s land area) cause greenhouse gas emissions that amount to almost 5% of the worldwide total. Most of these emissions come from lands used for drainage-based agriculture and forestry. To meet the climate goals of the Paris Agreement, all intact peatlands must remain wet and all already drained peatlands (500,000 km2) must be rewetted. Any peatland use should only take place under wet conditions. The greatest challenge for rewetting lies with peatlands in intensive agricultural use. These lands urgently need alternative (wet) production methods (paludiculture) to allow productive use while avoiding the environmental harm from conventional drainage-based peatland use. This requires cross-sectoral national peatland protection strategies with measures to strengthen structures and promote innovation. The massive implementation on the ground, however, is best left to the self-directed momentum of enterprises and markets steered by climate protection rewards (“carbon credits”) as a transitional strategy to facilitate a rapid start-up of peatland rewetting. In this way, companies can compete with drainage-based peatland use until paludiculture is technically fully mature and economically self-sustaining.