Peatlands

Learn why peatlands are critically important and what threatens them. Peat is partially decayed vegetation found in a water-soaked and oxygen-deprived environment. Types of peatlands include mires, fens, bogs, pocosins, muskeg, moors, and peat swamp forests. Peat can be as much as sixty feet thick and preserve up to 3,000 metric tons of carbon per hectare, making them an important carbon sink. Peatlands are refuges for rare and endangered plants and animals, such as sundews, bonobos, flying foxes, and orangutans. Indigenous people use peatlands for fishing, hunting, fiber, fruit, timber, and medicine. Indigenous knowledge and care are essential to the protection of peatlands from boreal regions to the tropics (see Wetlands Nexus and Mangroves Nexus).

• Threats to peatlands include draining for agriculture, especially for palm oil; extracting peat for horticulture or fuel; and oil drilling or mining. Current levels of deforestation, agricultural conversion, and burning could eliminate peatlands from Southeast Asia by 2030 (see Palm Oil Nexus).
• The oldest tropical peatlands have been storing carbon for as long as 47,000 years. In Europe, draining peatlands began in Roman times. In the tropics, humans began to transform peatlands two hundred years ago.
• Peatlands remain so little understood that the largest peatland in the tropics, the Cuvette Central of the Congo, was only discovered in 2017. We are still discovering the wildlife species they contain.
• When peat dries out, microbial activity increases in the carbon-rich soil, resulting in a sharp increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
• Degraded peatlands that have been converted to palm oil plantations are a large source of greenhouse gas emissions.
• Indonesia leads the world in peatland emissions due to peatland drainage and fires. Russia, China, and the United States are also large emitters.
• Of particular concern are permafrost peatlands, which could release large amounts of greenhouse gases if allowed to thaw under climate change.
• Drained peat catches fire easily. Peat fires can travel underground and last for months or years. Smoke from peatland fires in Russia in 2010 caused thousands of premature deaths, while Indonesian peatland fires in 2015 released more greenhouse gases per day than the entire U.S. economy and blanketed multiple countries with toxic smoke.
• It takes one or two decades for restored peatlands to start forming peat again and become carbon sinks.

Get to know your peatlands and speak out for them. Although they often have historical and cultural significance along with unique biodiversity, peatlands are often underappreciated.

• Take a virtual journey to peatlands around the world here.
• Find a peatland near you using the Global Peatland Database.
• Experience peatlands at Living Bog Project sites in Ireland; The Flow Country in Scotland; national parks such as Kouchibouguac or Wapusk in Canada; the Great Dismal Swamp and the Everglades in the U.S.
• Help research peatlands through citizen science. The UK has a map of active citizen science and community engagement projects. In Canada, Indigenous communities are partnering with researchers to assess carbon in Mushkegowuk territory.
• Advocate for peatlands and other wetlands. This op-ed invites using agroecology in the warming North to preserve Indigenous lifeways and protect peatlands. This one advocates for wetland protection at the state level in Vermont as a way to fight climate change.
• Join a social media site for peatlands, including the International Peatland Society’s Facebook and Instagram sites; the Facebook page for #peatlands; the Facebook page for People for Peat; and the Facebook page for Peatlands in Southeast Asia (see Key Players below).

Make consumption choices that preserve peatland. Palm oil plantations on peat are responsible for 1.5 percent of global CO₂ emissions. The plantations also damage the Sumatran elephant and orangutan habitat. Horticultural peat harvesting, largely in Canada, also causes substantial emissions.

• Avoid palm oil products. The International Palm Oil Free Trademark and the Orangutan Alliance list products without palm oil. See Palm Oil Nexus for more ideas.
• Consider products made using illipe nuts. Illipe nut comes from trees that grow in peatlands and is one of the most promising sustainable crops in Indonesian peatlands. Illipe butter can be used in chocolate and cosmetics. It can provide income for local and Indigenous communities that can keep peatlands intact instead of draining them. Forestwise sells fair trade illipe butter and Lush and Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve sell cosmetics using illipe butter.
• Avoid using peat in horticulture. Most horticultural peat comes from peatlands in Canada, and successful restoration of excavated sites takes years. Alternatives include composted bark, composted green waste, or your own compost (see Compost Nexus). Locally sourced material is preferable. Shredded wood from forest thinning may be an option. Here is an online guide from the Responsible Sourcing Scheme (UK).

Protect intact peatlands on land you own or use. Draining peatlands for agriculture only works in the short term. The organic soil decomposes, releasing stored carbon into the air, and the soil compacts, resulting in technical and financial challenges.

• Maintain the hydrology of bogs and fens and put in a buffer strip of shrubs and grasses to prevent fertilizer contamination and reduce invasive weeds. Prairie strips or hedgerows can also provide habitat for birds and pollinators.
• Don’t overgraze peatlands. Peatlands are easily damaged by trampling and slow to recover. Water buffalo are especially suited to peat grazing.
• Don’t burn peatlands. The scientific evidence is clear—peatlands do not require burning to maintain their health.

Transition to alternative uses of peatlands. Draining peatlands for agriculture doesn’t work. Consider alternatives such as ponds, paludiculture, or agroforestry for income.

• Use blocked drainage channels for fire breaks or beje ponds, a traditional system of fishing in Indonesia in which fish swim into the ponds during wet seasons and are removed during dry seasons.
• Implement paludiculture, a promising technique of growing peat-adapted species in hydrologically restored peat. In Germany, farmed sphagnum moss substitutes for mined horticultural peat. In Belarus, reeds are harvested for fuel, preserving the peat on which they grow. In Indonesia, traditional crops such as sago, illipe nut, and jetulung are peatland natives that can provide livelihoods while maintaining flood protection. Gelam may be a peat-compatible source of pulpwood.
• Use agroforestry to provide a buffer for intact peatlands, especially on mineral soils near peat. Intercropping trees with seasonal crops may allow communities around degraded peatlands to improve their economic conditions while allowing restoration (see Agroforestry Nexus).
• Keep bees. In Indonesia, native bees or honeybees both produce honey from peatland flowers.

Involve local communities in restoration, monitoring, and maintaining peatlands. A survey of policy makers, nonprofits, and researchers involved in peatland restoration in Indonesia highlighted the need for local involvement. Another study highlighted community input as necessary for beneficial outcomes. Communities are critical to the three main phases of peatland restoration: rewet peatlands, restore vegetation, and revitalize local economies.

• In Finland, a community-based co-management council links science-based and local/traditional knowledge, enabling adaptive management of the Jukajoki watershed, including the formerly highly degraded Linnunsuo peatlands. Involving the traditional inhabitants of the area (the Sámi) as part of the socioecology has ensured successful rewilding.
• In Indonesia, communities are involved from planning, to construction, to monitoring drainage ditch-blocking projects. Community fire monitoring can be very effective in preventing fires and catching peatland drainage problems early.

Rewet peatlands. Rewetting is necessary to restore vegetation, as this study in North America and this one in Norway demonstrate.

• Blocking drainage ditches is an effective approach to maintaining the water table that has been used around the world. Blockage techniques can be adapted to local conditions.
• Rewet entire hydrological units. A piecemeal approach will leak water from one area of the unit to another, preventing the necessary water rise.
• Raise the water table as high as possible. The lower the water level, the greater the risk of fire and the higher the emissions from peat.

Revegetate rehydrated peatlands.

• Stabilize bare peat to prevent erosion. In the UK, heather brash has been used as a mulch that also provides heather seeds and moss spores. More detail here.
• Maintain stable water levels to promote revegetation. In two Swedish degraded peatlands, revegetation occurred spontaneously but took longer in the area with higher fluctuation in water levels.
• Replant, if needed, with local species. In temperate or boreal peatlands, sphagnum moss will reestablish itself if there is a source, but it can also be propagated offsite and inoculated offsite. Once it is established, other species can recolonize. In tropical peatlands, planting a diversity of species provides ecosystem services such as animal habitat and shade.
• Reforest peatlands only if trees are part of the local ecology. In tropical peat swamps, native trees are appropriate for regenerating peatlands. They provide shade and maintain humidity and can provide a livelihood for local communities with species such as sago and jelutung. However, afforestation projects on treeless peatlands can damage biodiversity and water quality, disturbing the peat’s ability to sequester carbon long term. In boreal and temperate peatlands, trees may increase fire risk (see Afforestation Nexus).

Maintain a peat-responsible supply chain. Illegal drainage of peatlands for palm oil continues with the collusion of major companies such as Procter & Gamble and Mondelēz, while pulp-producing giants Asia Pacific Resources International (APRIL) and Asia Pulp & Paper have both been found clearing peatlands illegally. Local communities have protested; their traditional livelihoods are threatened by the plantations.

• Find alternatives to palm oil or use palm oil from a credible certifier. See Palm Oil Nexus.
• Ensure that pulpwood is sourced responsibly, without destroying peatlands. Pulp is used both for paper and textile fibers such as rayon (viscose). Pulpwood companies in Indonesia continue to plant trees in degraded peatlands despite pledges to stop, raising the risk of out-of-control fires. Canopy provides a directory of environmentally friendly paper products and textile fiber for companies seeking to reduce emissions.
• Use substitutes for mined peat. Farmed sphagnum moss can support paludiculture on peatlands that have previously been used for agriculture. Wood fiber, shredded bark, compost, or biochar are other possibilities (see Biochar Nexus).

Bogland by Seamus Heaney from Bruce Derby (1 min.)

Palm Oil Production, Peatland Loss and CO₂ Emissions by Wetlands Int'l (4 mins.)

Restoring Peatland Forests in Indonesia (Bahassa Indonesia) by Wetlands Int'l (6 mins.)

Why Is This Spot in the Congo Attracting So Much Attention? by Mongabay (7 mins.)

Measuring Carbon in Peru's Tropical Peatlands by CIFOR (6 mins.)

Peatlands—Climate Regulation and Biodiversity by Naturstyrelsen (14 mins.)

Peatland Legacy (Saving Ireland’s Peatlands) EE17 EP4 by Earth Horizon (24 min.)

Global Peatlands Pavilion Channel

"How Ireland Is Abandoning Its Dirty Fuel" by Nessa Tierney / BBC

"Ex-Logger Leads Firefighters Defending Indonesia's Peatlands" by Harry Jacques / Thomson Reuters Foundation

Northern Peatlands in Canada: An Enormous Carbon Storehouse by WCS Canada

"For the Love of Peat: Our Best Defence Against a Changing Climate" by Edward Struzik / The Walrus

"Smouldering Past: How a Fire Event Turned Me into an Environmental Historian" by Katja Bruisch / NiCHE

"Why Saving World's Peatlands Can Help Stabilize the Climate" by Ed Struzik / Yale Environment 360

Tropical Peatlands in the Anthropocene: Lessons from the Past by Cole et al. / ScienceDirect

Global Peatland Restoration: Demonstrating Success by IUCN

Mires and Peat is a peer-reviewed internet journal focusing specifically on mires, peatlands and peat.

Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis by Annie Proulx / Simon & Schuster

"Canada’s Peatlands: Towards A National Assessment" by Julie Van Offelen / Global Peatlands Initiative

Exploring the Great Dismal Swamp by Virginia Water Radio (5 mins.)

Culture of the Congo Peatlands by Living On Earth (5 mins.)

Bogcast 1: Blanket Bog for Beginners by Yorkshire Peat Partnership (13 mins.)

Peat Fires, Like Those Raging in Siberia, Will Become More Common in Canada by CBC Radio (27 mins.)

Brian Jackson on Peat Alternatives by A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach (26 mins.)

For the Love of Peat by 99 Percent Invisible Podcast (40 mins.)

Restoration for Peat's Sake by Mongabay Podcast (48 mins.)