Healthy Peatlands Matter!

Peatlands are true superheroes in the fight against the climate crisis: they store twice as much carbon as all the world's forests combined. But the reverse is also true: drained peatlands today release a large proportion of the carbon once stored as greenhouse gas. Globally, this affects about ten percent of the peatlands. According to NABU, drained peatlands in some European countries emit more greenhouse gas than industry and transport combined. High time for countermeasures.This is where the NABU project comes in. Its goal is to restore a near-natural water balance to an area of 689 hectares of drained peatlands over the next five years. This area is equivalent to about twice New York's Central Park or about 1,000 soccer fields. The main areas involved are peatlands in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland and Germany. They are currently used for agriculture and forestry, and some have been drained for centuries.