For peat’s sake

With the climate negotiations in Copenhagen looking uncertain to say the least, the recent award of £5.5m towards restoring more than 2,000 acres of Peak District and South Pennine moorland makes for some welcome good news. It is the largest sum to be awarded to a UK project in the history of the EU’s Life Programme and means a UK-based project called ‘Moors for the Future’ is now one of the biggest peat restoration operations in Europe.

Besides storing carbon and providing a great habitat for wildlife – not to mention walkers! – healthy peat moors provide good quality drinking water (in fact, 70% of our drinking water comes from these landscapes) and helps reduce the likelihood of flooding. In good condition our moorlands slow the flow of rainwater, which may reduce the likelihood of flash flooding in downstream urban areas.

So what can we do to help preserve our peat? Well, as you can see from these pictures of Black Hill before restoration (May 2004) and after (July 2008), restoration of these crucial environments is possible. The Moors for the Future Partnership is working within the Peak District National Park and beyond to restore large areas of peat moorland to a healthy, living and sustainable state so that it can once again fulfil its key role in mitigating climate change.

“Peatlands are very important,” re-iterates Lord Chris Smith, Chair of the Environment Agency and Vice President of the Ramblers. “They store millions of tons of carbon, helping to mitigate climate change and can hold back rain water to prevent flooding downstream. If these moors are damaged these important services to society are lost. This is why the Agency is committed to this Partnership Project, it is a win-win protecting biodiversity and helping us manage two of the most serious challenges we face on coping with flood risk and climate change.”

For more on the project, visit the Moors for the Future Partnership website.

The finer points of peat

•Peat moorlands cover less than 3% of the land surface of the Earth yet they contain twice as much carbon as the world’s forests

•Peat is the single biggest store of carbon in the UK, storing the equivalent of 20 years of all UK CO2 emissions and keeping it out of the atmosphere

•Three billion tonnes of carbon are stored in UK peat – more than in the forests of Britain and France combined – of which 20 million tonnes is locked up in the Peak District