They’re soggy, smelly, acidic landscapes made up of decomposing vegetation. For centuries, peatlands have lived in our collective imagination as the site of pagan legends and fantasy. Now they are a crucial lynchpin in Britain’s efforts to avert climate disaster. The majority of UK peatland carpets Scotland, although large swathes can also be traced across most of Wales, down the north of England and in the Fens of eastern England.
When healthy, peatlands help sequester carbon, reduce flooding, provide drinking water and support vibrant biodiversity. In the UK, they make up about 12 per cent of the land and store as much carbon as all the forests in the UK, Germany and France combined. Globally, the impact of peat bogs is vast: covering only 3 per cent of the Earth’s land, they are its largest terrestrial store of carbon, sucking in more CO2 than all the world’s vegetation put together.
But recent recalculations of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions inventory have dragged peat bogs out of legend and into reality. After adjusting calculations for accuracy (previous estimates reported only 6 per cent of emissions from peat) the UK’s land has been revealed as a source rather than a sink of carbon. Instead of sucking down carbon dioxide, as has been presumed since 1990, our natural landscape has been revealed as a net contributor to global heating—and the big problem is peat.
When peatlands dry out, they release huge amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere. “Around 80 per cent of the UK’s peatlands have been significantly degraded by the way they are managed, primarily through drainage for agriculture and forestry,” says Chris Evans of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. “Other factors are livestock grazing, managed burning, wildfires and extraction of peat for fuel, gardening and horticulture.”
Poor management of peatland is tightly bound up with Britain’s landownership system. “Large tracts of moorland with these precious peat habitats are owned by a relatively small number of landowners,” says Richard Bunting from Rewilding Britain. Grouse shooting estates make up half a million acres of land in the UK. These lands are routinely burned to encourage populations of grouse, which are drawn to new shoots of heather. “We want to see them move away from outdated and damaging practices like burning and draining and begin to take a more rewilding approach to their lands,” Bunting continues.
It is bad news for the government’s own climate targets. To reach net zero by 2050 at the latest, every possible pathway laid out by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) requires the land sector to draw down carbon dioxide, offsetting residual emissions in other sectors. Nature’s potential to decarbonise is rich, with some estimates suggesting restored habitats could offset 10 per cent of UK emissions. “If the land sector fails to become a net sink, then the UK would be more reliant on engineered removals,” says Simon Evans, deputy editor of Carbon Brief, referring to methods of capturing and storing CO2. “These are unproven at scale.”
The recognition that land is a net source of carbon emissions also undermines the UK’s presidency of COP26 this year. The UK government has pledged to restore 35,000 hectares of England’s peatland by 2025, but this only represents 1 per cent of the UK’s total peatland. It also falls far short of CCC recommendations to restore 50 per cent of upland peat and 25 per cent of lowland peat by 2050. “It’s a baby step in the right direction but we have a global responsibility to be far bolder,” says Bunting.
Legislation introduced to address the issue has not gone far enough. A ban on the burning of vegetation above peat bogs earlier this year has several loopholes. The legislation prevents the burning of vegetation only in areas which are designated as a “Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI)” or “Special Protection Area” and are over 40 centimetres in depth. Even then, burning licences can be granted for “wildfire prevention.” The Wildlife and Countryside Link, a coalition of 57 green organisations, has warned that 70 per cent of upland peat is excluded from the ban.
With grouse moors burning across North Yorkshire last week, experts are calling for stronger government regulation. And some communities are taking the initiative. A recent success story comes from southern Scotland in the shape of Langholm Moor, where one community raised £3.8m to purchase and rewild 5,200 acres from the Duke of Buccleuch, Scotland’s largest private landowner. The community has focused on restoring ancient woodland, planting new native trees and creating a wildlife haven—and restoring the peatlands.
Britain’s wetlands may not have the global allure of the Amazon, but the health of the unglamorous bog has become fundamental for meeting climate targets. Past societies feared and revered the peat bogs—perhaps it’s time we did likewise.
