World calls for urgent action on peatlands
Peatlands cover about 3% of the Earth’s land area, store huge amounts of carbon, and provide habitats for diverse flora and fauna. The recent UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, has adopted its first ever resolution on peatlands. A groundbreaking step!
It may not have been intentional but International Women’s Day on 8 March this year saw representatives of The European Union, Indonesia, Norway, the United States and UN Environment - by chance all women - hammer out an agreed draft text on a groundbreaking new resolution on peatlands.
Rural women across the world are often the unsung heroes of ecosystem conservation, so it is fitting that the peatlands resolution was largely crafted by women.
Peatlands cover about 3 per cent of the Earth’s land area, store huge amounts of carbon, and provide habitats for diverse flora and fauna. The recent discovery of one of the biggest carbon sinks in the Congo Basin, the Cuvette Centrale, which straddles the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, has dramatically altered the estimates of carbon reserves contained in peatlands. The Cuvette Centrale peatland is a biodiversity treasure trove, as the Minister of the Environment of the Republic of Congo, Arlette Soudan-Nonault, reminded us during the Fourth United Nations Environment Assembly.
While Indonesia has been in the spotlight for sharing its efforts to overcome repeated fires caused by peatland drainage, and for their large-scale restoration and conservation initiatives, tropical peatlands are not the only type of peatlands. In fact, these ecosystems are found in around 180 countries. UN Environment recently focused attention on the huge permafrost peatlands in the globe’s far north, and the importance of conserving them as a hedge against potentially calamitous climate change.
“Through the negotiations, Member States realized that if they wanted global action on peatlands, any resolution needed to cover all peatlands, not just tropical peatlands,” says UN Environment’s leading peatlands expert Dianna Kopansky. “Delegations from the European Union and the United States worked together with Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to come up with a commitment that promotes climate action, ecosystem restoration, resilience and drainage-free livelihoods.
The subsequently approved final resolution, which is not legally binding but which States have a moral obligation to adhere to, got strong support and received accolades from Member States for being in line with the Assembly’s theme #SolveDifferent. The resolution urges “Member States and other stakeholders to give greater emphasis to the conservation, sustainable management and restoration of peatlands worldwide”.
In the tropics, as Indonesia has learned, the secret to preventing peatland fires is keeping peatlands wet. Restoring drained and degraded peatlands often requires re-wetting and restoration of the peatlands hydrology.
The resolution requests UN Environment “to coordinate efforts to create a comprehensive and accurate global peatlands inventory”: without reliable data, policymakers don’t even know where these “carbon hotspots” are, and they cannot effect sustainable change.
It also encourages “Member States and other stakeholders to enhance regional and international collaboration for the conservation and the sustainable management of peatlands” and “Member States… and all other actors involved with peatland conservation, management and restoration… to foster the conservation and sustainable management of peatlands”.
UN Environment, working with many partners, is beginning to change mindsets on peatlands.
“The adoption of the global resolution on the Conservation and Sustainable Management of Peatlands marks an important moment for the environment, for global biodiversity conservation, climate action and resilience,” says Tim Christophersen, head of UN Environment’s Freshwater, Land and Climate Branch, and Chair of the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration. “And the timing is auspicious: the recently declared UN Decade on Ecosystems Restoration 2021-2030 should lend impetus to peatland conservation and restoration efforts.”
Kopansky adds: “We’ve come a long way since December 2016 when UN Environment was asked to coordinate efforts to protect, conserve and restore peatlands. Publications such as Smoke on Water, and the collaborative efforts of the Global Peatlands Initiative have been hugely influential in changing attitudes.”
[This article original appeared on unenvironment.org]
UN Environment
From Resolution to Solution: UNEA’s Unique Opportunity to Tackle Environmental Dimensions of Armed Conflicts
When the Fourth Session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-4) takes place in Nairobi starting March 11, governments, international organizations, and civil society organizations will discuss issues on the theme of innovative solutions for environmental challenges and sustainable consumption and production with over 30 draft resolutions submitted for discussion. With few international forums where the environmental dimensions of conflict can be properly discussed, we were optimistic about the past resolutions tackling this topic.
The impact of conflicts on peatland conservation
Peat areas have played a pivotal role in conflicts globally, and have also been a point of contention during post-conflict recovery. Communities in Southeast Asia as well as in the countries of the Congo are facing challenges as finding political solutions for this problem.
To fight illegal coca plantations and conflict actors’ income sources, Colombia’s president wants to loosen the ban on aerial glyphosate spraying. However, considering the dynamics of organised crime, the use of toxic herbicides will not only fail to achieve its aim, it will have many adverse effects for the environment and human health, fundamentally undermining ways to reach peace in the country. International cooperation and national policy-makers need to account for this peace spoiler.
As India grapples with the worsening impacts of climate change, the need to strengthen its adaptation efforts has become more significant than ever. Climate diplomacy and mainstreaming climate adaptation into the most vulnerable sectors could provide some solutions to overcoming barriers, such as the lack of sustainable funding.
“Climate Security risks will materialise in very different ways and forms, whether we talk about Lake Chad or about the Arctic, Bangladesh and the Small Island Developing States,” said the EU’s Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, Joao Vale de Almeida, in his opening remarks. “But for the EU, there is no doubt, as underlined in 2016 in our Global Strategy, and reaffirmed by the 28 Ministers of Foreign Affairs, that climate change is a major threat to the security of the EU and to global peace and security more generally,” he said.
The challenges facing the international community are growing while the willingness to cooperate seems to be waning. Foreign policy must help bridge this gap. One way to accomplish this is by pushing forward a major achievement of multilateralism: the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. At a side event during the 2019 High-Level Political Forum, diplomats and policy experts discussed the role of foreign policy in the global sustainability architecture.