Peatlands And Climate Change

Peatlands are a type of organic soil that is very rich in carbon. Peat soils are dark in colour and are formed from accumulation of hundreds to thousands years of undecomposed remains of plants and other organic matter. These lands in particular are a combination of peat soils covered by water. They are therefore peat wetlands or peatlands in short.

These wetlands occur almost everywhere on the planet, from tropical to temperate regions. Almost every country globally has peat in one form or another. Peatlands cover 3% of the planet but are so rich in carbon that they host almost a third or 30% of all soil carbon with slightly more than half a trillion tons of carbon. This makes them the biggest land-based reservoirs of carbon ahead of forests (twice bigger).

Peatlands vary widely, and consist of mires and bogs, waterlogged soil, fens and swamps to forest peat. An example of forest peat is the vast stores of peat found underneath the Congo Forest which is the second largest forest network globally. This is the biggest of its kind so far discovered.

Part of the peat forests of the Congo Basin. Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace

)

Peatlands contain huge amounts of carbon and this is because they are covered by water or are waterlogged. These conditions cause oxygen scarcity which means that no organic matter can be broken down by soil bacteria. A good majority of peat soils are also acidic. All these plant remains therefore remain in the soils making them carbon heavy.

Because naturally they are partially or fully flooded, peatlands perform a host of ecosystem functions. They are a very biodiversity rich habitat, and contain endemic and particular species that don’t flourish anywhere else. They also filter water of pollutants, with peat soils absorbing most contaminants. Peatlands also regulate water flows, supplying drinking water when there is not enough rainfall or there is drought, and absorbing excess water in times of heavy rainfall or storms. In this way, they protect against floods.

About 71.4 million people rely on peatlands for various services, including food and feed supply, textiles, fuel, medicine, fisheries or grazing lands.

When it comes to carbon sequestration, peatlands have been net absorbers for many centuries. They efficiently lock up all the carbon absorbed by plants without re-releasing it. Additionally, peatlands have the potential to continuously absorb carbon. But due to human caused pressures, these areas are now being turned into carbon sinks.

In fact damaged peatlands are responsible for 5% of human caused greenhouse gas emissions which cause climate change. They are third, behind conventional agriculture and forestry in the land use sector.

Threats faced by peatlands are foremost draining for agriculture. It is one of the biggest pressures to both the existence and integrity of peatlands. Agriculture incudes small scale subsistence and large scale farming. An example of the latter is palm oil plantations and pulp wood plantations. Palm oil is a major ingredient of cooking oil and the cosmetics industry and so is grown as a cash crop.

Peatlands mistakenly seem ideal for pulp wood plantations which unfortunately cause mass emissions of greenhouse gases from the clearing and oxidation.

Furthermore they are exposed to logging and concessions to cut down trees.

In its flooded state, peatlands release varied amounts of methane (CH4) which is a short-lived greenhouse gas. However, when drained or disturbed, they release carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, which are more consequential greenhouse gases.

Agricultural inputs such as fertilizers carry the additional risk of triggering conversion to nitrous oxide and nitrates invading potable water supplies and also causing eutrophication of water bodies.

Now, the carbon in the peat soils is kept intact because air cannot pass through the water on the surface and cause a chemical reaction, but when drained; peat soils react directly with oxygen, and the carbon is converted to massive amounts of carbon dioxide. They are oxidized.

Peatlands are also mined for horticulture and as a source of energy. Peat is the initial stage of forming lignite, which is a type of the fossil fuel coal. Peat soil is also used for livestock grazing, and for infrastructure development. The most dangerous activity on peat is starting fires. Peatlands are deeply carbon rich and fires burn long and deep after they start. Peat fires can burn for extended amounts of time, smouldering beneath the ground, extending from months to hundreds of years. In this way, they can release vast amounts of CO2.

When drained, peat soils carry off significant amounts of dissolved organic carbon.

And because water is a big part of the volume of peat soils, when drained, the soils are easily compacted and reduced in size and so the entire area starts sinking or undergoing subsidence.

Drained peat soil is also vulnerable to water and wind erosion.

The best way to protect peatlands is to simply conserve them. Keep them intact. Even though they look unused and “idle” they perform important environmental and climate regulation services. Leaving peatlands alone means that they continue in climate mitigation by further absorption of carbon dioxide and two is that the carbon already locked in is kept intact.

The second option is restoration and rewetting. This means to flood drained peatlands again. That is, block off drainage ditches, and rewet the entire surface of the peat to what naturally existed before disturbance. Even though a significant fraction of the carbon has already been lost, the deeper reserves can be kept intact and further oxidation is stopped by the water.

If 40% of drained peatlands can be rewetted globally, then the total tally for peatlands would be net positive and climate positive. They would turn into carbon sinks.

However, because of the manmade development that has already taken place, reclaiming peatlands is generally a bit difficult of an affair. Nevertheless for abandoned peatlands, adaptation through replanting and monitoring against fires is important. These are peat soils that have been exploited to the maximum and are now abandoned because they have increasingly low commercial value. Abandoned peat still continues to emit carbon.

The third option is management of peatlands. This means carrying out of economic activities that are compatible and do no disturb the peat. Paludiculture, which is the natural or artificial growing of crops in flooded conditions is ideal. Such crop species thrive on the ground and are harvested, then their roots are left in the soil.

Another example is aquaculture. This works with peat because it take places above ground and need waterlogged conditions to be successful. Biofuel crops and species for pharmaceutical use can also be grown.

Now, apart from all that peatlands serve other purposes like job creation, spiritual purposes and cultural use, and as recreational facilities. But for carbon regulation particularly, peatland protection and restoration can stop 800 million metric tons of ghgs annually. Scientists say that the world needs to set aside about 46 billion USD to do this annually up to the half century mark in order to cut by two the emissions from peatland exploitation especially from fires.

The first step to protecting peatlands is to simply determine their acreage globally and how they are spread out. Not all peatlands have been discovered, and a lot is still not documented in terms of surface area and volume.

Something that would perhaps help in this is universal definitions of peatlands.

Peatlands qualify for carbon markets because they are carbon sinks and the sale of carbon credits would provide a clean and safe source of income as an alternative to exploitation.

Peatlands can be included in payment for environmental services programs such as for water regulation, flood control etc.

In fact, corporations and business entities can show environmental responsibility by investing part of their earnings in peatland conservation and management.

Peatlands are a part of the nature based solutions to climate change. As part of NbS, they are very cost effective when conserved in their original state as opposed to other ways of mitigating climate change. Enhancing their sink capacities is a better and cheaper way of acting on climate.

Community sensitization is a vital part of peatland management. Local communities are the biggest stakeholders of natural ecosystems. All forms of solutions and initiatives must involve these communities and have their agreement. These initiatives must show real value to the community at the grassroots level.

Knowledge sharing would be beneficial because it is avails the best in terms of indigenous knowledge and traditions versus new scientific knowledge.

Public education on the importance of peatlands and awareness campaigns would lead to a more environmentally conscious populace in which there would be a multiplicity of individual and collective efforts to protect peatlands.

Involving platforms such as Clean Development Mechanism and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) ensures that the carbon removal function of forests is protected. This applies to forest peat like the Congo and swamp forests.

These wetlands also can be included in the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (plans for cutting emissions that are decided on at the national level).

However, for all this to take place, peatlands need proper economic valuation. A good portion of the destruction of peatlands is because of ignorance of the economic value of peatlands especially when environmental services are factored in.

When done, the next step would be to invest in these lands.

Of course legal protection of gazetted peatlands would help a lot especially since the United Nations has recognized the right to a clean, safe and healthy environment as a human right.