Blogger – Jim Densham – Senior Land Use Policy Officer – RSPB ScotlandThe issue of peat being dug out of our countryside for use by gardeners featured on The One Show just the other evening. Perhaps the editor had been prompted by Harry Huyton’s previous blog (A nudge is a fudge)?
In Scotland we have our own share of lowland raised bogs being damaged through this practice, leading to the loss of some of our most special places for wildlife and one of our natural defences against climate change. In its recent White Paper, Defra published milestones to phasing out peat for horticulture, but these targets don’t apply to Scotland. So, this week we sought a friendly Member of the Scottish Parliament to ask a few pertinent questions in Parliament about the Scottish Government’s policy on peat extraction for commercial use. We look forward to the answers and to increasing the pressure for a similar phase out in Scotland.
This week I will be attending a conference in Stirling organised by the IUCN Peatland Programme and launching a new report to coincide with it. A large proportion of our peatland areas, like raised bogs, are damaged and contributing to climate change instead of helping to fight it. We know that if we restore peatlands to a healthy and functioning state they can return to being good for wildlife and beneficial for the climate. We want to make sure that the vast amounts of carbon they store in their deep peat soils stays where it is rather then being lost to the atmosphere. Scotland’s peatlands hold a whopping 10 times the amount of carbon stored in the UK’s forests!
Restoring peatlands will need strong political commitment and money. It will also need policy change. Our new report cites numerous examples of policies that influence how peatlands are managed (too many to go into here). It concludes that they don’t pull together for the goal of restoration and reducing greenhouse gas emissions – in fact, too often they can actually conflict and stop this goal being achieved. We are asking Government to update, adapt and align its policies and to remove these remaining barriers. We are also continuing to call for Government to commit to restoring 600,000 hectares of peatland in Scotland – for the benefit of wildlife and the climate.