policy recommendations

Harmonise Policies

Harmonise all policies, legislation and actions affecting peatlands to ensure they do not negate one another. Ensure interdependent EU policies such as green and land use objectives reinforce rather than contradict one another. 

Mainstream Peatland Restoration

Incorporate peatland management and restoration in all appropriate national strategies, including a schedule for change that clears the path for action on peatlands.

Establish Effective Reporting 

Gather effective data on peatland emissions and ecosystem services to draft accurate and sufficient legislation.

Create Common Standards

Develop EU-wide common, accessible, usable standards and  affordable techniques for GHG balance assessment to underpin international carbon credit schemes and effective reporting. 

Engage & Inspire Communities

Work with farmers, communities and stakeholders to increase awareness of the importance of peatlands and build a positive vision of their future role as custodians of the re-wetted land. 

Set The Research Agenda

Establish an EU-wide shared research agenda to identify and close knowledge gaps, encourage collaboration and avoid “re-inventing the wheel”. 

Harness New Business Models

Build reliable business cases and funding models, supported by peatland market ecosystems, to ensure financial viability of sustainable peatland management. Support the transition to new activities with demonstration sites, machinery co-operatives, and strategic funding. 

Increase Economic Incentives

Increase economic incentives for farmers and landowners to rewet, maintain and restore peatlands, including carbon credits and using CAP subsidies to support sustainable peatland practices with conditional payments for restoration, maintenance and wet farming.

Integrate Peatlands Across Policy

• Assess policy holistically to avoid contradiction and highlight peatlands in all relevant areas from climate and biodiversity to water and flooding.

• Peatland benefits and needs cross policy sectors, creating a risk that peatlands fall through the gaps.

• Fragmented legislation can lead to contradictory policies as the interdependencies of environmental goals go unacknowledged. In Latvia, for example, climate and biodiversity policies, which should protect peatlands, are in direct conflict with energy policies, which state that peat should be used for energy production.

• Assess legislation holistically from an integrated perspective to ensure one area of environmental action is not negatively impacting another. For example, different EU and national funding schemes could synergistically support wet agriculture on peatlands.

• Assess all legislation in the light of the Paris Agreement’s goals and biodiversity targets to highlight the importance of land use emissions and the impact on habitats.

• Consider peatlands and their hydrology in the context of the entire watershed and catchment area in the frame of the Water Framework Directive and Flood Directive.

Establish Effective Reporting 

• Gather effective data on peatland emissions and ecosystem services to draft accurate and sufficient legislation.

Existing legislation can be based on outdated data, especially when it comes to peatland distribution, carbon storage and land use. This legislation can thus prioritise an unfavorable status quo or insufficient measures. In Lithuania, for example, wetlands are protected by land laws which prevent change in the water system, making it extremely difficult to raise the water level. In Estonia, it is prohibited to raise water levels and abandon drainage systems in agricultural lands. Conserving grassland on peat soils without raising water levels, however, reduces GHG emissions only marginally. 

In most EU Member States, reporting and accounting for GHG emissions from peatlands underestimates their importance as a source of GHG emissions.

Include peatland emissions within national emission inventories. Use an up-to-date methodology following 2013 IPCC Wetlands supplement and comprehensive area data for peatland distribution and status. For example, from 2021 Ireland will report GHG emissions and removals from managed wetlands (including peatlands) as part of the progress toward EU GHG targets. Additional guidance is given in a policy brief by Greifswald Mire Centre here.

Mainstream Peatland Restoration

• Incorporate peatland management and restoration in all appropriate national strategies, including a schedule for change that clears the path for action on peatlands.

• Excessive bureaucracy can thwart restoration measures. In Poland, for example, collecting the necessary permits for blocking ditches with dams can be twice as expensive and significantly more time consuming than building the dams.

• Incorporate peatland management and restoration in national climate change plans, laws, biodiversity strategies and nature restoration plans, including tangible objectives and timescales. National peatland strategies should foster the awareness and mainstreaming of peatlands in policy making. 

• Integrate peatland agriculture into national CAP strategic plans and Rural Development Plans. Use agri-environmental and climate schemes (AECS), such as those proposed during the DESIRE project for Poland and Lithuania, as part of a package of payments for water retention and paludiculture.

• Create emission reduction pathways to guide peatland management in order to outline a transparent schedule for change, to which stakeholders can orientate their decisions.

• Designate protected areas (national and EU Natura 2000 sites) within which peatlands must be conserved. Successful examples of protected peatland zones can be seen in Estonia, Germany and Ireland.

• Use CAP subsidies to support sustainable peatland practices with conditional payments for restoration, maintenance and wet farming.

• Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) damages peatlands EU wide by supporting farmers with significant subsidies for agricultural activities that require peatlands to be drained. This influential policy often comes into conflict with the EU’s environmental aspirations expressed through policies such as the Green New Deal.

• Replace harmful CAP payments with conditional payments that favour conservation and maintenance, of all peatlands, including supporting farmed wet peatlands and phasing out funding for drained peatlands. Implementation and maintenance of paludiculture should be taken into account within the CAP.

• Remunerate ecosystem services with results-based payments.

• Ensure interdependent EU policies such as green and land use objectives reinforce rather than contradict one another. 

• Sectoral fragmentation of EU policies creates conflict in reaching individual sector objectives and can be counterproductive.

• Strengthen the nexus between climate, biodiversity, water and bio-economy within the EU Green Deal and its policies to look more holistically at peatland benefits and mainstream them into different policy fields.

• Recognise and include a strategy for peatlands in all relevant policies, frameworks and directives.

• Peatlands are largely overlooked in the EU Climate Framework as they are not reported and accounted for within the agricultural sector, but rather under Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) regulation, which currently has weak targets. 

• Peatland habitats are some of the most threatened and degraded ecosystems across the EU. While this is recognised under the Habitat Directive, only limited action has been taken.

• The Water Framework Directive only considers water bodies directly, although peatlands are in direct contact and crucial for water quality and quantity in rivers, lakes and seas. The Greifswald Mire Centre has produced a fact sheet outlining the vital filtering role of buffer zone peatlands. 

• Peatlands should be taken more directly into account in the Water Framework Directive implementation as they have a direct impact on the quality and quantity of waters in respective water bodies following the existing guidance of the European Commission. This has been explored in the DESIRE project, which has analysed the recognition of peatlands in the Newman river basin’s management plans.

• Harmonise all policies, legislation and actions affecting peatlands to ensure they do not negate one another. 

• Policies on climate, biodiversity, water management, agriculture, and energy can, at times, contradict and negate one another.

• Align member state and EU policies and legislation that connect to peatlands with the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement targets to ensure they are not in contradiction.

• Foster collaboration and capacity building between science, conservation, academia, business and local people across the EU at every opportunity to build alignment and minimise the chance of contradictory efforts.

• Reduce fragmentation in peatland regulation to prevent damaging practices from being relocated. 

• National policies can affect the wider EU market. If member states do not have a unified approach to regulation and enforcement, companies might move operations to escape strict regulation. For example, if peat extraction is banned in one country but substrates with peat are still on the market, it could continue to be imported from abroad, damaging peatlands elsewhere. 

• Reduce fragmentation in conservation enforcement with EU wide directives.

• Create common, accessible, usable standards for GHG balance calculations to underpin international carbon credit schemes.

• The lack of centralised standards at EU level for GHG balance calculations can make internationally comparable carbon credit schemes challenging to implement.

• Develop common GHG balance calculation standards and frameworks at EU level to pave the way for an effective EU-wide peatlands carbon credit scheme.

• Consolidate land to create large areas under single ownership, allowing for easier re-wetting and avoiding conflict.

• Peatlands have complex ownership structures and land use rights. Many different owners make access to land in one hydrological basin difficult and policies impossible to fully mandate. This means a singular owner of a minor area can block the whole process of rewetting and shifting to wet management.

• Adapt national and regional planning regulations to prevent minor landowners from exercising a veto to block rewetting measures which have been agreed upon by the majority. Consolidation can be critical to success as action needs to happen across the peatland ecosystem and in connection to the landscape that surrounds them.

• Work with farmers and communities to build a positive vision of their new role as custodians of the re-wetted land. 

• There is a strong cultural history of land use, resulting in uncertainty with change. For example, in Ireland, peat (or turf) was long seen as a source of power for homes and electricity plants. The Irish Peat Board (Bord na Mona) has now shifted to restoration, but the historical right to cut and burn the ‘turf’ has made the change controversial.

• In the Netherlands and Northwest Germany there is a long tradition of drainage and cattle grazing on grassland for dairy, which is a distinct feature of the region’s landscape and will drastically change with large-scale rewetting and the transition to paludiculture.

• Build a positive image of farmers caring for peatland ecosystem services, for example as “peatland carbon farmers”. In Germany, the job profile ‘Moor-Klimawirt’, meaning Moor Climate Host, was created and promoted. 

• Work with farmers’ associations, taking socio-economic factors into account, to gain trust and build awareness in this traditional and often unfairly maligned industry.

• The Smartland project in the Netherlands provides a successful example of how building a positive image can bring local communities and the wider public on board.

• Support the transition to new activities with demonstration sites, machinery co-operatives, and strategic funding. 

• Alternative products to peat are underdeveloped and insufficiently promoted. For example, in Germany, a common complaint by growing medium companies is the lack of availability of alternatives in adequate quantity and quality to produce soil and stay profitable.

• Paludiculture, a new technology that does not yet have a fully proven supply chain, is challenging to implement as it requires a full transformation of management practices and machineries. The current small-scale crop areas hinder large-scale production and the economic viability of production. 

• There is a lack of adequate wet-adapted machinery to help operate re-wetted sites economically. 

• Establish agri-cooperatives or machinery rings to ensure that single farmers do not need to bear all the restoration costs.

• Increase the number of medium-large demonstration sites to test and develop techniques and markets (for example, for substrates or construction material).

•  Include peatlands in National CAP strategic plans and rural development plans to support farmers and landowners with restoration by funding ecosystem services and facilitating new economic activities.

• Increase economic incentives for farmers and landowners to rewet, maintain and restore peatlands.

• There are a lack of financial incentives for sustainable peatland management, with a particular lack of funding for rewetting only.  

• Current carbon credit systems do not effectively support sustainable peatland management practices and restoration. Adhering to international standards is often too expensive for most small peatland areas due to the high cost of verification to current standards.

• Establish voluntary carbon credit schemes and Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) frameworks for peatlands. Accreditation systems should be easy, cheap and based on GHG monitoring or proxies (e.g., GEST). 

• Establish results-based payment schemes such as that adopted by the Freshwater Pearl Mussel Project, a European Innovation Partnership (EIP) project in Ireland. This scheme allows farmers to implement on the ground measures such as rewetting drained peatlands and, in return, to receive financial incentives. 

• Develop common guidelines on how to measure and account for carbon credits and ecosystem services to establish a payment scheme.

• Support farmers with revised CAP and, in the UK, Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS) payments that encourage peatland restoration or maintenance of existing undamaged peatlands. It is essential that payments can be relied upon long term, to build sufficient security for farmers to enact transformative change and make the necessary investments.  

• Apply “polluter-pays” principles so that the procurers of drainage-based farming must include the externalised costs of environmental damage.

• Build reliable business cases, supported by peatland market ecosystems, to ensure financial viability of sustainable peatland management. 

• The business case for alternative investment in peatlands is underdeveloped, and a significant number of farmers and landowners are still hesitant to commit due to a perceived lack of market security. Farmers lack confidence in the current models due to a low number of large-scale demonstration sites and proven cases. 

• In parallel there are many untapped actors seeking to invest in peatlands for enhanced carbon offsetting, or to incorporate low carbon paludiculture products into their production process. 

• Bridge the gap between the relevant actors across the value chain, including industries interested in or reliant on the ecosystem services and products from peatlands. This includes water utilities, food and beverages, construction, energy, and pharmaceuticals. 

• Link local business interests to the benefits of peatland restoration for sustained economic growth locally. For example, local manufacturers could benefit economically from the flood protection offered by healthy peatlands. 

• Launch a corporate social responsibility policy that requires businesses to invest X% of annual profits in restoration of carbon rich ecosystems like local peatland sites.

• Set-up an EU-body to oversee a common, standardised, simple framework for GHG calculations that takes into account varied environmental indicators such as biodiversity, GHG, and flood services.  

• Common standards for the monitoring of effects on different ecosystem services are not developed, even at member state level. Data on the development of peatlands is mostly missing.

• The indicators chosen to measure environmental protection can also often overlook peatlands. For example, a policy which only considers sustainability in terms of energy, or environmental protection in terms of biodiversity, could miss the crucial role of peatlands. 

• Develop common standard indicators that are easy to use by local stakeholders in member states and that also function at EU level to monitor success and enable wider meta studies on the impact of peatland rewetting.

• GHG monitoring systems should be easy to use (without the need for expert-operated analytical instruments) and affordable. Quick (but reliable and scientifically-sound) overall-methods are important for decision makers.

• Expand and standardise GHG assessment techniques and models to include a wider reach and variety of territories. 

• Current GHG assessment models are hyper-specific to their location and geography. As such, there are a lack of common, EU wide metrics that could provide standard information to investors, land managers or policy makers.

• Calibrate the GEST approach for use with various land and vegetation types in different geo-climatic regions to make it fully operational for effective, accessible monitoring.

• Drive ongoing development and research into GHG monitoring systems, including funding for this research.

• Currently, there is not enough capacity or funding for sufficient monitoring of peatland GHG emissions. 

• Increase funding for GHG emission (or proxy) monitoring and assessment for peatlands to increase the accuracy and availability of the data necessary to support evidence-based decision making. 

• Establish an EU-wide shared research agenda to identify and target knowledge gaps and to prevent “re-inventing the wheel”. 

• Researchers and experts in the peatland community are often working in silos, without a common vision, leading to duplication of efforts. 

• Launch a communications campaign to make the need for a common approach in evidence-gathering and restoration (for transferability and replicability) clear.