Leaders from across Africa and Asia will gather this week in Gabon for an international summit on the state of the world's tropical forests, which experts say are disappearing at an alarming rate.
Many of the discussions will focus on the Congo Basin, which stores more planet-warming carbon than the Amazon but is disappearing.
The Congo Basin is home to the world’s largest tropical peatlands, along with Brazil and Indonesia. The peat swamp forest of the Congo Basin stores around 29 billion tons of carbon – approximately equivalent to three years’ worth of global greenhouse gas emissions – while the Basin as a whole absorbs nearly 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year . The Basin stretches across six countries- Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.
“The Congo Basin is one of the world’s last regions that absorbs more carbon than it emits,” says Doreen Robinson, the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Head of Biodiversity and Land. “We have to find ways to meet critical energy needs for development without sacrificing peatlands and the essential services they provide for people and the economy.”
Peatlands are an effective carbon sink – they absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than they produce. Carbon sinks are essential to combating the climate crisis and protecting planetary health. However, peatlands and other carbon sinks are already at risk of collapse due to climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste, warns UNEP’s Becoming #GenerationRestoration report. Without the critical services these ecosystems provide, the climate and nature crisis will only worsen.
Peatlands and the climate crisis
The climate crisis causes more frequent extreme weather events that worsen food and water scarcity, hinder global economies, and threaten human well-being. With human-caused greenhouse gas emissions forecast to rise, ensuring urgent cross-sector action and protecting and sustainably managing peatlands is considered crucial.
Peatland ecosystems play a key role in mitigating the climate crisis. They house and protect rare and vital nature and offer resilience through water capture, storage and much more. According to a UNEP report, protecting and restoring the peatlands that are already degraded can reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 800 million metric tons per year.
Peatlands cover only 3 per cent of the global land surface but store an estimated 600 billion tons of carbon – twice as much as in all the world’s forests. This makes them one of the most efficient carbon sink ecosystems and underlines the need to protect them, experts say.
Plants absorb carbon during the process of photosynthesis, which they use to convert into wood, leaves and roots. Because peatlands are water-logged, plant matter takes longer to decompose. This traps more carbon and provides a net-cooling effect.
Peatland peril
Several countries have recognized the importance of peatlands and have made commitments to protect the imperiled ecosystems. At the Global Peatlands Initiative meeting held in Brazzaville in 2018, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo and Indonesia signed the Brazzaville Declaration, which promotes better management and conservation of the Cuvette Centrale region in the Congo Basin, one of the world’s largest tropical peatlands.
At the UN Environment Assembly in 2019, Member States played a key role in establishing a resolution that urges them and other stakeholders “to give greater emphasis to the conservation, sustainable management and restoration of peatlands worldwide.”
Despite these agreements, peatlands remain especially vulnerable to human activity.
Approximately 15 per cent of peatlands have been drained for agriculture, while an additional 5–10 per cent are degraded due to vegetation removal or alteration. The draining and burning of peatlands emit approximately 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide through oxidization or fires per year, which amounts to nearly 5 per cent of all human-caused emissions. An annual investment of US$46 billion by 2050 is needed to slash half of these emissions, and experts warn that the bill for saving peatlands will only increase without urgent investment.
Protecting peatlands
Governments must conserve more protected areas and emphasize the importance of peatlands’ ecosystem services. Assigning economic value to peatlands and placing a price on carbon emissions would deter harmful and excessive resource extraction and also provide critical financial resources that can support local communities and sustainable development.
“Peatlands and forests provide numerous ecological, economic and cultural benefits to millions of people,” says Robinson. “The long-term economic costs of ecosystem damage far exceed short-term financial gains from resource exploitation. Countries have recognized the importance of protecting peatlands and must act to meet those commitments.”
Some jurisdictions, like the European Union, are considering imposing restrictions on commodities whose production caused the degradation of carbon sinks. Individuals can also urge governments and businesses to adopt nature-friendly behaviour and policies that promote net-zero emissions.
The Global Peatlands Initiative, led by UNEP, connects experts and institutions to improve the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of peatlands. The UN-REDD Programme, the UN’s flagship partnership on forests and climate, acts as an advisory platform to realize forest solutions to the climate crisis. It plays an important role in managing peatlands in Indonesia, which is home to approximately 22.5 million hectares of the ecosystem.
Preventing resource extraction and increasing the resiliency of peatlands benefits millions of people and enables progress towards reducing the climate crisis.
“There is no possibility of limiting global warming to 2°C or 1.5°C if we don’t conserve existing carbon sinks, such as peatlands, and quickly cut fossil fuel emissions, reaching net-zero by 2050 – but ideally much sooner,” says Mark Radka, Chief of UNEP's Energy and Climate Branch. “We must also undertake a massive ecosystem restoration effort to reduce carbon emissions from non-fossil sources.”
Contact information: To learn more, please contact Dianna Kopansky, Global Peatlands Coordinator <dianna.kopansky@un.org>.
