"AN ESTIMATED 15% OF THE WORLD'S PEATLANDS HAVE BEEN DEGRADED SO FAR... 50% OF THAT DEGRADATION IS FOR AGRICULTURAL LAND USE.
"Despite covering only 3 percent of the global land area, [peatlands] hold 30 percent of all soil carbon, amounting to at least 500 gigatons – twice the carbon stock of all forest biomass. Unlike most terrestrial ecosystems, peatlands do not reach saturation, and continue sequestering carbon in soil organic matter for centuries or millennia."
Source: Inland Wetlands Map – Fluet-Chouinard, E., Lehner, B., Rebelo, L.M., Papa, F., Hamilton, S.K., (2015) "Development of a global inundation map at high spatial resolution from topographic downscaling of coarse-scale remote sensing data," Remote Sensing of Environment, 158: 348-361. | Peatland Map – Peatland Distribution. Global Peatland Datatbase. 2022. Greifswald Mire Centre. UNEP. Global Peatlands Initiative. German Ministry for the Environment. International Climate Initiative. | quotation - Project Drawdown, Peatland Protection and Rewetting. Image Source: Irdyn swamp, Ukraine. wikimedia commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
RESTORING PEATLANDS BY REWETTING HAS BEEN DEMONSTRATED TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS.
"As a long term carbon store they are hugely important... removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the peat under waterlogged conditions. Drained peatlands on the other hand are a significant source of carbon emissions with less than 0.3% of the land area giving rise to almost 6% of total global anthropogenic CO2 emissions."
