In 2017, scientists from Leeds University published an extraordinary discovery. They had been modelling satellite data across the rather inaccessible Congo Basin to understand better its ecology and hydrology. 

The data pointed to the right conditions for peat formation across a very large area – indeed if it were peatland, it would constitute the largest peatland ever discovered – hidden in plain sight by one of the largest remaining tropical forests. The only way to check the data would be to walk in with coring equipment to see if peat really existed.  

Three weeks of sweat drenched, mosquito infested, dengue-inducing, back-breaking walking into the somewhat lawless forests of the Congo confirmed their analysis: the Congo Basin contained at least 360,000 km² of peatland forest estimated to store 30 billion tonnes of carbon (that’s roughly seven times the biggest ever oil/gas discovery) and containing some of the oldest peat in the world with basal radiocarbon dates going back to 42,300 years before present. The Cuvette Centrale swamp forms the largest peatland complex on Earth.
 

Sharing knowledge in the Global Peatlands Initiative 

This meant that the two Congos (Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo) were now in the top 10 nations on Earth for their peatlands. This was recognised in the capital of the Republic of the Congo by the Brazzaville Declaration where, under the auspices of United Nations Environment Programme, the two Congo countries joined the Global Peatlands Initiative.

The initiative promotes peatlands at international conventions, through publications (for example Smoke on the Water, the Peatland Atlas and the Global Hotspot Atlas), and through facilitating international knowledge exchange (including the IUCN-UK Peatland Programme, hosted by The Wildlife Trusts). 
 

Peatlands are superhero habitats

The Global Peatland Initiative partner meeting was recently held in Lima – long delayed by the Covid epidemic and funding availability within UNEP. This gave some of us the opportunity to visit peatlands in the Amazonian basin. 

As with all peatlands, these habitats are genuine superheroes. At the GPI meeting, we heard about the many uses of peatland habitats. Peruvian peatlands in the Amazon are dominated by the aguapé palm Mauritia flexuosa which produce nutrient-rich aguaje fruits that provide livelihoods for local communities, who sell the fruit in local markets or turn it into fruit juices to sell in wider markets. A common way to harvest the palm is to chop the tree down to get at the fruits – a one-off use of a tree. A more sustainable approach, promoted by eNGOs in the area, is to climb the tree to harvest fruits – though this is not for the faint-hearted. 

Meanwhile, these vast peatland forests continue to sequester carbon. A third of all carbon released by us to the atmosphere via fossil fuel burning is re-absorbed by natural carbon capture and storage systems such as peatlands (and marine sediments, mangroves and coral reefs for example). 

Other Peruvian peatlands – those in the high Andes paramo landscapes – are conserved because they provide base water flow to dry Peruvian cities along the coast. This reminds us of the less well conserved British upland peatlands (that were routinely burnt through ‘managed’ burning over the last hundred years or so) that provide drinking water for British cities. 
 

Drainage and burning have caused huge damage to peatlands globally

Peatlands might be immensely important but before programmes like the Global Peatlands Initiative, the IUCN-UK Peatlands Programme or the work of Greifswald University, peatlands were often considered as wastelands to be exploited for some other more profitable purpose. 

The great Bog of Allen that stretched across central Ireland has been mostly burnt for electricity from the 1950s; most of the massive coastal tropical peatlands in Sumatra and Borneo are now drained and planted with oil palm or acacia; whilst the raised bogs of the UK were nearly lost entirely for horticultural peat. 

A better understanding of the peatlands, international convention and, for us, Directives emanating from our European Union days has taken us back from the brink but the damage sustained means that the store of carbon in peatland systems is eroding and oxidising. 

One of the greatest natural (and free) carbon capture and storage systems on the planet has been turned from carbon sink to a source. 
 

Peatlands need to be restored – but who should foot the bill? 

We urgently need to restore these systems – for their carbon storage abilities, to create more resilient landscapes (wetlands are difficult to burn), for the water they store, for the wildlife they support, for the floods they temper, for the wide open skies and biodiverse forests that support recreation, health and tourism. But who should pay for that conservation and restoration? 

This was much discussed at the meeting: 

First, those that live and work in and around peatlands through revenues based on healthy biodiverse peatlands – aguapé palm fruits in Peru, illipe nuts in Indonesia, light grazing for meat production in the UK, paludiculture (wetland farming) and so on. 

Second, companies whose own revenues depend on peatlands – insurance companies who depend on peatlands to reduce floods, water companies who harvest raw and cheaper-to-treat water from peatland catchments, companies who seek to offset those carbon emissions that they don’t yet have the technology to remove, by funding peatland restoration etc. We often collectively refer to this as ‘green finance’. In Britain, water companies are spending significant sums to restore upland peatlands because in the long-term it should reduce the cost of the water treatment. 

Third, by insisting that those who damaged peatlands in the first place have to pay for the costs of restoration – this might be moorland managers that have burnt away the sphagnum cover of our upland blanket bogs for heather monocultures that might be good for grouse but are disastrous for water and air quality, for wildlife and natural flood management. 

Or it might be the palm oil companies who drained peatlands so much, that during the 1997 El Nino event (that causes drought in south east Asia), some of these drained peatlands set on fire causing smoke that is estimated to have caused at least $4.5 billion dollars' worth of damage across many SE Asian nations. We often refer to this as the ‘polluter pays’ principle that is enshrined in English law through the Environment Act 2021. 

And finally, we have to recognise that many of these benefits are common to all of society such that restoration can only be effectively paid for through public expenditure. In the UK, most damage sustained to our peatlands – deliberate or accidental – is restored through State grants. Currently, in England we rely on the Nature and Climate grant stream and in Scotland the Peatland Action Programme.   
 

The UK should show global leadership on peatland restoration

The difficulty is how to argue for peatland protection and restoration in amongst the many competing priorities for state funding. This is where international agreement and convention is so important. The UK was part of the ‘high ambition’ group of nations that led to the Convention of Biological Diversity Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. We should be proud of the part we played, but international agreements are easy to sign and can be easy to ignore. Civil society is required to hold Government to account. We can do that in four ways: 

1. Build a community of interest – across policy, research and restoration practitioners

2. Share knowledge and good practice

3. Build consensus and cut through the science ‘noise’

4. Advocate as a movement

This is exactly what the Wildlife Trust-hosted IUCN-UK Peatland Programme is about at a UK level. And it’s what the Global Peatland Initiative is about at an international level. 

Our peatlands are global superheroes. Here in the UK, as the first country to industrialise (leading to great prosperity on one hand and a climate and nature catastrophe on the other), we have a clear international responsibility to show leadership on the Global Biodiversity Framework. 

Our rare and precious blanket bogs, our lowland raised bogs and fens are the perfect place to show that global leadership.