Of Mires and Men

High Fen Wildland, summer 2024

By Matthew Hay, Natural Capital Manager, Nattergal

Bog, fen, marsh and swamp

It will surprise no-one to learn that the UK is a wet country. In both relative and absolute terms, our islands receive a lot of precipitation, most of it rain. This dampness increases the further north and west one travels, and with altitude, too. The end result is a vast array of habitats and soils that are waterlogged for much of the year – our peatlands.

Where these wet conditions persist, organic matter – that is, dead plants and beasties – is deprived of oxygen and cannot fully decompose. Instead, the residual material builds up in layers over time, forming a carbon-rich substance called peat.

Peat doesn’t care what creates the waterlogging it needs to form but we humans have different names for the different types of habitats that exist. When a peatland is fed only by rainfall, we call it a bog. When it’s fed by groundwater as well, we call it a fen. If it’s dominated by grass species, it’s a marsh but if trees have taken over, it becomes a swamp.

These distinctions are less important than the essential qualities of peatlands themselves. As organic matter builds up over time, peatlands become vast carbon stores. They also provide a home for distinctive wildlife and help to regulate the quality and quantity of water flowing through our landscapes. So far, so good.

The problem is that, historically, peatlands have been despised as either wasteland or wilderness and drained or damaged to try and bring them to heel and make them productive.

What is productivity anyway?

Sadly, our misguided understanding of productivity meant that not only did we fail to make peatlands perform economically, we fundamentally undermined the many services they were already busy providing, especially carbon storage and sequestration.

In England, only 13% of peatlands are in a near-natural state, almost all of which found in the uplands. The degraded remainder are emitting 10 million tonnes of CO2e every year, almost 3% of the nation’s total.[1] In Scotland, the situation is even more extreme, with some estimates suggesting peatlands are responsible for a fifth of the country’s net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The worst offenders tend to be lowland peatlands, which are often historic fens. Despite comprising only 14% of the UK’s peatland, these habitats are contributing 56% - more than half – of our total peatland emissions.

Put another way, if the UK cannot restore its degraded peatlands, we will not get to net zero. It’s as simple as that.

Is it all going peat tong?

But fear not – nature markets are coming to the rescue. Right? Years of hard work has led to the creation of carbon standards like the Peatland Code, which allow the positive climate impact of peatland restoration to be quantified and standardised, opening the door to the generation of verified emissions reductions (a.k.a carbon credits), which can be sold to polluters to help finance restoration activities.

Sounds great in theory. However, as alluded to in our previous article, voluntary demand for carbon credits is inconsistent. For peatland carbon there is a further issue. Because the carbon credits are predicated on an emissions reduction rather than a removal of GHGs from the atmosphere, like a growing tree would, they are classified as avoidance credits.

On the face of it this makes sense. Peatland carbon units are avoidance credits. But two problems arise from this. The first is that several types of avoidance credit, notably those generated by renewable energy schemes and reduced emissions from deforestation (REDD) projects, have historically been dogged by controversy about their additionality, which relies on hard-to-prove counterfactuals. This has led to some carbon buyers having lower confidence in the integrity of any avoidance credit – they are sadly marred by association.

The second and arguably bigger problem is that the removal versus avoidance distinction has been adopted by the Science-based Targets Initiative (SBTi) – the gold standard for corporate climate action – and incorporated in their guidance for credible net zero plans. The upshot is that while peatland carbon credits can and are being used for ‘Beyond Value Chain Mitigation’, by businesses wanting to go above and beyond what is required for their net zero targets, only removal credits can be used to neutralise (i.e. offset) up to 10% of a business’ residual emissions.

This may not seem like a big deal. But it is. It reduces the already voluntary demand for carbon credits further for peatlands, stratifying different types of nature-based climate solutions into more and less-desirable categories from a corporate perspective.

If voluntary demand is unlikely, can we look to compliance markets to save the day? As we outlined in our previous post, we are hopeful that these can increase demand for nature-based solutions with certifiable climate benefits. However, the recent government consultation for inclusion of greenhouse-gas removals (GGRs) in the UK ETS proposes to exclude peatland carbon credits precisely because they are not a removal.

What is the point in nature markets?

We live in a time when public finances are stretched to breaking point and, given the demographic headwinds we’re facing, likely to remain that way. The question has always been, how do you scale nature and climate projects quickly enough to meet our legally-binding targets in this fiscal context? Especially given that there is already a funding gap for nature that runs into the billions.

This is the reason we have created nature markets. This is the problem they are trying to solve. Get the private sector involved in nature’s recovery and help that process to scale exponentially.

So you have to wonder why we are getting bogged down (pun intended) in the semantics of particular rules. We’re not so much missing the wood for the trees here as becoming bark specialists and there needs to be a recalibration of what we (the UK and others), collectively, are trying to achieve.

Let’s also consider the chronology of emissions here, in the context of a climate emergency. In the UK it takes around 15 years to generate verified carbon removals through woodland creation. Peatland restoration delivers emissions reductions that start immediately. At the moment, we’re incentivising businesses to support the sequestration (by trees) of greenhouse gases, which were potentially released by peatlands decades earlier, instead of the prevention of those emissions at source. When you factor in that every day a greenhouse gas spends in the atmosphere it contributes to planetary warming, the inherent contradictions of this approach are stark.

If you want to deliver a quick, nature-based, positive climate impact, you go after peatlands. The results are decades quicker than woodland creation, the risk of reversal is far lower and you could clock up millions of tonnes of emissions abatement in the time it takes a tree to grow.

But of course, we’re not advocating for an either/or approach. It needs to be both (and more habitats besides) and it needs to all start happening now!

Integrity is a means to an end

The counterargument to everything we’ve outlined above is that by allowing an avoidance credit special treatment we begin to undermine the already contested integrity of carbon and nature markets. We understand this point of view. Our response to that would be that we should create different categories of credits and move beyond a reductive and unhelpful removal: avoidance dichotomy to something more appropriate. Don’t forget we, humanity, have created these markets, these rules and these definitions. We can change them to ensure we’re delivering on our objectives.

That’s our fundamental point. The carbon market’s integrity is a means to an end. With integrity comes participation, with participation comes demand and with demand comes the funding these nature-based solutions so desperately require. We must remember what we’re trying to do here and not make integrity the end in itself.

PR stands for peatland restoration

Part of the issue with peatlands is an age-old problem. They don’t have good PR. At first glance, they often lack the magnificence of forests or the beauty of species-rich grasslands. They are wet, often cold, difficult places for humans to be.

But peatlands are the British Isles natural jewels. Globally, far more important than any of our other terrestrial habitats and when you take the time to understand their quiet, unassuming character you start to see why.

When you’re stopped dead by the otherworldly cry of a red-throated diver echoing out of the mists from a lochan in the bog or hear the bugling of cranes calling across an East Anglian marsh. When you see the intricate, delicate beauty of insectivorous plants in amongst the moss or watch a hobby snatching dragonflies from above a fen, you start to glimpse the magic of our peatlands.

They aren’t sexy like tree planting is. They aren’t simple to understand or restore. They definitely do have a PR problem, one that has led to us inflicting harm on them for centuries. So let’s make sure we find ways to fund their restoration and preservation and, more than that, let’s all of us loudly bang the peatland drum and start taking pride in these extraordinary wetland habitats

[1] Peatland addition to the UK GHG inventory adds 3.5% to national emissions | IUCN UK Peatland Programme (iucn-uk-peatlandprogramme.org)