"Bogs and swamps are a colossal carbon store but their continued destruction would blow climate change targets"
"The world’s peatlands are “dangerously underprotected” despite the colossal amount of climate-heating carbon dioxide already being emitted due to their destruction, a study has warned.
Peatlands occupy just 3% of all land, but contain more carbon than all of the world’s forests. However, farmers and miners are draining the peatlands, releasing so much CO2 that if they were a country, they would be the fourth biggest polluter in the world after China, the US and India.
The first global assessment found that only 17% of the peatlands were within protected areas. This contrasted starkly with other valuable ecosystems such as tropical forests, where 38% were protected, and mangroves (42%).
Protection was even lower than the 17% average in the three nations with the most peatlands: Canada, Russia and Indonesia. The US and Brazil completed the top five nations, which contained almost three-quarters of all peatlands, and had higher proportions in protected areas. But the researchers cautioned that protected status on a map did not always translate to strong protection on the ground."
Damian Carrington reports for the Guardian February 13, 2025.
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