The trace of haze

John Crump

By GRID-Arendal

December 7^th, 2018

Around 15% of the world’s peatlands have been drained and are used for agriculture, livestock and forestry. Drained peatlands are prone to fires which are very hard to put out and have a range of effects.

One of the most serious is that the haze these fires generate contains dangerous levels of particulates called “black carbon”, as well as trace metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and nitrated PAHs. These substances increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, respiratory conditions and cancer and can reduce air quality over long distances. And haze knows no borders.

Peatland fires are hard to extinguish because they can burn undetected underground for months, even after rainfall. They can even burn under snow cover.

Haze from Indonesian peat fires obscures Marina Bay, Singapore, on 23 Sept. 2015 (photo: Eco-Business).

Marina Bay, 24 Feb. 2018 (photo: John Crump)

These fires cause huge emissions of greenhouse gases – 1,800 tonnes CO2 per hectare.

The only sustainable way to avoid fires and keep the CO2 they contain in the ground is to restore the water level where they have been drained. This is important because on average, peatlands are “the most carbon dense of any terrestrial ecosystem in the world.” Each hectare of wet peatland contains an amount “equivalent to the annual emissions of 1,400 passenger cars.”

That was the main message at an event held today at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Katowice, Poland. Participants in the session came from academic institutes in Germany, Russia, Poland, Indonesia and the United Kingdom. This session highlighted the importance of peatland rewetting for climate change mitigation and adaptation, human health and biodiversity.

“Adequate rewetting not only prevents fires but also reduces greenhouse gas emissions,” said Prof. Hans Joosten of the Greifswald Mire Centre in Germany. “It also stops soil degradation and subsidence and enhances biodiversity, and where suitable, paludiculture – the name for wet agriculture and forestry – enables productive use to continue.”

Joosten once described peatlands as “a jar of pickles – if you remove the water, the remaining material rots away.”

The session also strengthened a growing coalition of governments and experts that are part of the Global Peatlands Initiative - a global effort to save peatlands. Among other things, it featured the Restoring Peatlands in Russia Project, which has been working with local and national partners and was awarded a UNFCCC “Momentum for Change” award in 2017. It also shared the progress of the Indonesian Peatland Restoration Agency in its efforts to rewet millions of hectares of drained peatlands.

“If we want people to change how they manage peatlands, we must make conservation pay, and we must develop policy mechanisms that make this possible,” said Mark Reed, a researcher from School of Natural and Environmental Sciences at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom.