CARE-PEAT

The project

Caring for Peatlands:

Care-Peat is an Interreg project for North West Europe (NWE) that brings together 12 partners working together to reduce carbon emissions and restore the carbon storage capacity of different types of peatlands in North West Europe. The core partnership consists of 7 knowledge institutes and 5 nature conservation organizations from Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK. Together with 5 sub-partners and 47 associated partners, we develop and test new techniques and socio-economic strategies for carbon reduction.

Peatlands in the face of climate change:

Why focus on peatlands? Peatlands are not only habitats for highly specialized flora and fauna, they also play an important role in regulating the global climate. Peatlands in the northern hemisphere account for 3-5% of the total land area and contain about 33% of the world’s soil carbon. Therefore, peatlands have a high natural carbon saving potential and play an important role in natural solutions to climate change.

When peatlands are drained, well-preserved carbon is released into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases. This is why it is important to maintain wet peatlands. Unfortunately, many peatlands are degraded and emit carbon instead of storing it. Annual global greenhouse gas emissions from drained organic soils are twice that of aviation. We must act now to prevent further degradation and encourage the recovery of remaining peatlands.

What does Care-Peat do?

The main objective of Care-Peat is to implement and demonstrate innovative technologies for new restoration and carbon measurement techniques and to involve local and regional stakeholders.

Therefore, conservation organizations, in collaboration with local landowners, are restoring peatlands at 7 different pilot sites, ranging in size from 1 to 250 hectares, and demonstrating the (potential) carbon savings from the restoration. For each pilot site, different restoration techniques are used – from manual management to supplementary peat moss cultivation. Throughout the project, organizations are supported by knowledge institutes that work together to develop and test new equipment, methods, and models for predicting carbon fluxes (e.g., using drones and satellites to guide restoration and provide data for carbon flux models). Care-Peat also works with innovative restoration companies and develops partnerships with local and regional stakeholders to increase the impact of the pilots and maximize socioeconomic benefits.

The main results of Care-Peat are the publication of a management and decision support tool and a set of socio-economic models for the best peatland restoration options for carbon storage. In this way, the results of the project are transferred and replicated to users throughout Northwest Europe to determine the most appropriate management measures, even after Care-Peat has ended.

In 2021, within the framework of the Interreg NWE program, the Care-Peat project has been given the opportunity to strengthen its scope with a so-called “capitalization” project. The aim is to apply the results of the project to new areas and a new target group in Northwest Europe. With this approval, no less than 3 new partners and 6 new associated partners have joined our consortium.

In the capitalization project we develop a unified methodology for assessing greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands, which is widely applicable in Northwest Europe (different peatland types and regions), and thus increase the impact of the decision support tool. In addition, we include farmers and farmers’ organizations as a new main target group by engaging directly with them and incorporating best practices for carbon savings on agricultural land.

How much carbon can we save?

Care-Peat is ambitious. By the end of the project in 2023, we hope to have avoided the loss and storage of about 8137 tons of carbon emissions per year on the 7 pilot sites (in total about 645 hectares).

After 2023, we hope that nature conservation and other organizations throughout the northwestern European region will take further action, resulting in many more peatlands being restored. And the more peatlands are restored, the more carbon is saved. In this way, peatlands can become an important natural partner for climate policies throughout Northwest Europe.