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Protect and restore threatened peatlands, one of the most ecologically diverse and carbon-rich ecosystems on the planet.
Although peatlands comprise only 3 percent of the earth’s land, they make up half of the world’s wetlands and store twice as much carbon as forests. Peatlands occur on every continent, including Antarctica, and people have gathered food, timber, and medicine from them for centuries. They provide essential flood protection and water filtration services for communities. However, they are under severe pressure from industrial activities and the effects of climate change. Many peatlands have been drained for agriculture and development, and others are drying out due to prolonged drought and rising temperatures, causing out-of-control fires. They could release large amounts of greenhouse gases as they further deteriorate and burn, changing from a carbon sink to a carbon source. Peatlands need to be protected, restored, and sustainably managed on a high-priority basis.
In Canada, we are home to 25% of global peatlands, across the country and especially the deep peat of Ontario’s Hudson Bay Lowlands. It’s the second largest peatlands complex in the world (over 300,000 sq. km). They are a crucial Canadian carbon sink, as peatlands cover 12% of our land area, and are one of our planet’s largest carbon stores. Deep peat takes over 1000 years to develop. Pressures include mining activities and extraction for our gardens and nurseries and export.
Learn why peatlands are critically important and what threatens them.
Peat is partially decayed vegetation found in a water-soaked and oxygen-deprived environment. Types of peatlands include mires, fens, bogs, pocosins, muskeg, moors, and peat swamp forests. Peat can be as much as sixty feet thick and preserve up to 3,000 metric tons of carbon per hectare, making them an important carbon sink. Peatlands are refuges for rare and endangered plants and animals, such as sundews, caribou, bonobos, flying foxes, and orangutans. Indigenous people use peatlands for fishing, hunting, fiber, fruit, timber, and medicine. Indigenous knowledge and care are essential to the protection of peatlands from boreal regions to the tropics.
In Northern Ontario, proposed mining in the Ring of Fire could destroy important peatlands. Threats to peatlands include draining for agriculture, especially for palm oil; extracting peat for horticulture or fuel; and oil drilling or mining. Current levels of deforestation, agricultural conversion, and burning could eliminate peatlands from Southeast Asia by 2030.
The oldest tropical peatlands have been storing carbon for as long as 47,000 years. In Europe, draining peatlands began in Roman times. In the tropics, humans began to transform peatlands two hundred years ago. In Canada, peatlands developed since the last glaciation, about 10,000 years ago.
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