Take part in UNEP’s Global Peatlands Initiative (GPI) and Eurosite’s (ELCN) joint social media outreach effort. Take action and demand faster and more peatlands protection, restoration and conservation to fight climate emergency when the world is meeting in Glasgow at the COP 26 conference in November 2021.
Nairobi and Tilburg, October 2021 – the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global Peatlands Initiative (GPI) and Eurosite the European Landscape Conservation Network (ELCN), today launch their joint social media outreach CLIMATE AND NATURE EMERGENCY: PEATLANDS MUST BE WET!. The outreach features people from all over EUROPE and beyond who demand the immediate restoration, protection and enhanced conservation of Europe’s and the world’s peatlands.
As it stands, we are at a crossroads in our collective efforts to reach the Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature goal of keeping the rise in mean global temperature to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F).
Healthy peatlands support this goal effectively as they are great carbon sinks. Peatlands worldwide store about 25% of global soil carbon which is twice as much as the world’s forests.
But peatlands are under severe threat.
Drainage for agriculture, peat extraction, infrastructure development, and global heating turn degraded peatlands into significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Degraded peatlands contribute as much as 5-6% of annual global human-caused greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC 2019) without counting the effects of burning peatlands, which can double the number.
We want you, individuals, leaders, and organizations to join our social media outreach to show the world that #PeatlandsMatter.
LINK TO THE SOCIAL MEDIA ASSETS
“Further degradation and loss of peatland ecosystems, regardless of their location, could seriously hamper climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts and the achievement of the Paris Agreement. We urgently need countries to scale up their annual nature and climate spending if we are to achieve all future biodiversity, land degradation and climate targets”, says UNEP’s Global Peatlands Coordinator Dianna Kopansky.
Likewise, Tilmann Disselhoff, President of Eurosite, shares this view: “For over 30 years, we at Eurosite have worked with our partners to restore and conserve nature. With their enormous ability to store carbon, peatlands naturally come into focus in times of climate emergency. The science is clear: The large-scale restoration of peatlands is essential for stopping and reversing global warming. This social media effort should only be the beginning”.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP):
UNEP is the leading global voice on the environment. It provides leadership and encourages partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising future generations.
About the Global Peatlands Initiative (GPI):
The Global Peatlands Initiative is an effort by leading experts and institutions formed by 13 founding members at the UNFCCC COP in Marrakech, Morocco in 2016 to save peatlands as the world’s largest terrestrial organic carbon stock and to prevent it from being emitted into the atmosphere.
About EUROSITE
Eurosite is working to create a Europe where nature is cared for, protected, restored and valued by all. We do this by providing practitioners with opportunities to network and exchange experience on practical nature management.
For more information, please contact:
Keishamaza Rukikaire, Head of News and Media Unit, UNEP
Dianna Kopansky, Global Peatlands Coordinator, UNEP
