"Study Finds Vital Peatlands Neglected"

"BARCELONA -- Draining and burning of the world's peat bogs accounts for about 5.5 percent of global carbon emissions but are currently excluded from governments' climate targets and U.N. talks, a study found on Wednesday.

Peat stores around twice as much carbon as all the world's trees, but compared with the well-publicized issues of fossil fuels and forests, the sector was the 'Cinderella' of climate change policies, said Hans Joosten at Germany's Greifswald University, co-author of the report."

Gerard Wynn reports for Reuters November 4, 2009.