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Peatland News

Title: Organic soils and peatlands
Date: 31-Jul-2012
Description: FAO, the MICCA Programme and Wetlands International have launched the global 'Organic soils and peatlands climate change mitigation initiative'. The Initiative is an informal network of organizations and people committed to reducing emissions from peatlands and safeguarding the other vital ecosystem services peatlands provide.

 

New poster available: Decision support tree for management of peatlands and organic soils.

Adapted from the recently published Peatlands – guidance for climate change mitigation by conservation, rehabilitation and sustainable use, the poster was presented at the side event, Peatlands: global challenges and opportunities for the Ramsar Convention, held at the 11th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties (COP11) of the Ramsar Convention in Bucharest Romania.

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A man paddles his boat through rewetted peatlands in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. (Wetlands International, Marcel Silvius)

Peatlands store tremendous amounts of carbon. However, when they are drained and used – mainly for agriculture, grazing and forestry – peatlands become significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Peatlands drainage and peat fires are responsible for almost one-quarter of carbon emissions from the land use sector.

Organic soils and peatlands climate change mitigation initiative

FAO, the MICCA Programme and Wetlands International have launched the global 'Organic soils and peatlands climate change mitigation initiative'.  The Initiative is an informal network of organizations and people committed to reducing emissions from peatlands and safeguarding the other vital ecosystem services peatlands provide. Institutions currently involved in the initiative include FAO, Wetlands International, Greifswald University, IUCN UK, Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Global Environment Centre (GEC), the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the University of Helsinki.  

The Initiative was launched on 17 May in Bonn Germany at a side event at the thirty-sixth session of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) held during the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change Conference. Listed below are the presentations made at the launch of the 'Organic soils and peatlands climate change mitigation initiative'.

At the launch, the Initiative‘s first publication was released, ‘Peatlands – guidance for climate change mitigation by conservation, rehabilitation and sustainable use’.

Facts about organics soils and climate change

• Peatlands and organic soils cover only 3 percent of the land area but contain 30 percent of the soil carbon.

• Including emissions from peat fires, the CO2 emissions from drained peatlands globally amount to some 2 gigatonnes per year and currently represent almost 25 percent of the CO2 emissions of the entire land use, land use change and forestry sector.

• Only about 15 percent of peatlands  are used and drained for agriculture, livestock rearing and forestry including bioenergy (oil palm) plantations. These drained peatlands, on 0.3 percent of the world’s land cover, emit, however, almost 6 percent of global CO2 emissions.

• Southeast Asia is by far the world‘s most important peatland hotspot, with half of the global peatland emissions originating from this region where rates of peat swamp deforestation and drainage are high.

• In Indonesia, where 95 percent of the peatlands are already degraded, peatlands are responsible for over 60 percent of the country’s total emissions.

• Western Indonesia (Kalimantan and Sumatra) will lose all of its peat swamp forests by 2030 if current annual deforestation rates of 3.4 percent are not reduced.

• After Indonesia, the European Union is the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases from peatlands. In the 27 countries of the European Union, cropland on organic soil is responsible for 77 percent of the CO2 emissions from all cropland and grazing land on organic soils for 79 percent of the emissions from all grazing land.

• Damaged UK peatlands are already releasing almost 3.7 metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent each year, the equivalent to the average emissions of around 660 000 UK households.

These figures are taken from Peatlands – guidance for climate change mitigation by conservation, rehabilitation and sustainable use



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