probablyasocialecologist:

Peatlands are unique ecosystems formed of partially-decomposed animal and plant matter which can sequester and store CO2 on a massive scale. The UK has a large proportion of the world’s peat—13 percent of the world’s blanket bog—and our peatlands currently store over 3 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to all the forests in the UK, Germany and France combined.

An estimated 78 percent of the UK’s peatlands are degrading, meaning that they are spewing out masses of carbon, having been dried out through land management activities – drained for agricultural use, extracted for horticulture, or their heather burnt to maintain grouse moors. Despite peat’s ability to store carbon, this poor state means our peatland are a net source of emissions, releasing an equivalent amount of CO2 to 140,000 cars a year. England is a particularly bad offender; despite containing only one quarter of the UK’s peatland by area, England’s peatlands account for 55 percent of emissions.

In a natural state, peatlands are wetland landscapes which can sequester colossal amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere; a hectare of natural peatbog can remove 3.54 tonnes a year, and a near-natural fen 5.44. We know it will require action at a national and international level to tackle the climate crisis, namely a socialist Green New Deal that radically transforms and rapidly decarbonises our economy. However, considering that around 12 percent of the UK is peatland, restoring the entirety of our peat to a natural state could play a pivotal role in reducing the UK’s—and the world’s—carbon emissions.

With our peatlands being hugely significant to global efforts to combat climate change, it’s fair to ask how they have could reached such a point of degradation. As with most aspects of climate change, this is a question of ownership. Through years of intentional mismanagement, pandering to grouse shooters, and receiving millions in public subsidies for doing so, wealthy landowners have been to permitted to drive our peatlands to the brink.

Even where peatlands are under statutory designations, or even within national parks, these are unlikely to be well maintained – with the condition of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) actually being worse within National Parks than without. Again, this comes down to ownership, as a vast proportion of National Parks aren’t even nationally owned – as examples, 90% of the Peak District National Park is privately owned, and Cairngorms National Park is entirely in private hands. The National Trust continue to lease out sections of the Peaks to various grouse shooting companies to further the degradation of our peat.

The Tories routinely say they support a ban on heather burning but have failed to deliver anything resembling this. Instead, they have pursued a series of voluntary agreements asking landowners not to burn. Evidently this has not worked.

It is wholly unacceptable for such globally significant land to remain in destructive private hands. Rather than nicely asking landowners not to use peatlands for shoots, or extract peat for profit, we need to get creative with land use.