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19 - Policy drivers for peatland conservation
- from Part III - Socio-economic and political solutions to managing natural capital and peatland ecosystem services
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- By Rob Stoneman, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust UK, Clifton Bain, IUCN UK Peatland Programme, Scottish Wildlife Trust, UK, David Locky, Grant MacEwan University, Canada, Nick Mawdsley, Euroconsult Mott MacDonald, The Netherlands, Michael McLaughlan, Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment, Canada, Shashi Kumaran-Prentice, Charles Darwin University, Mark Reed, Newcastle University, UK, Vicki Swales, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), UK
- Edited by Aletta Bonn, Tim Allott, University of Manchester, Martin Evans, University of Manchester, Hans Joosten, Rob Stoneman
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- Book:
- Peatland Restoration and Ecosystem Services
- Published online:
- 05 June 2016
- Print publication:
- 23 June 2016, pp 375-401
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
Peatlands have long been recognised as a high priority for protection under international and national wildlife laws and agreements. Over the last half century this protection has essentially been reactionary in the face of more widespread land management policy and market forces, which have encouraged damage to peatlands. This damage has been mainly to support the delivery of provisioning services, such as food, timber and pulp, or the widespread extraction of peat and oil. Across the world, peatlands of different types face a variety of pressures from land use and land-use change as well as pollution (e.g. atmospheric pollution on British blanket bogs), making them more susceptible to impacts of climate change. Within the general framework of international agreements on peatland conservation, each country has developed its own approach to tackling the threats with varying degrees of success. While established wildlife conservation policy has helped limit the extent of damage to peatlands in some countries, there is a need and opportunity for a stronger and more urgent public policy response to address the significant ongoing losses of peatland biodiversity and ecosystem services. The recognition of the multiple benefits that peatlands provide has presented new avenues to support sustainably managed peatlands, in addition to reducing peatland loss through active restoration (e.g. Bain et al. 2011; Joosten, Tapio-Biström and Tol 2012). This chapter presents an overview of the principal international and national policy drivers, with examples from selected countries across the world to highlight how new resources could be directed at wise use and conservation of peatlands.
Global overview of policy drivers for peatland conservation
While peatlands have been regarded as wastelands, and areas to be ‘improved’ for agriculture and forestry since the late eighteenth century (Chapter 2), they are now recognised for their wildlife and increasingly for their ecosystem services. Peatlands, therefore, feature in some of the world's highest-level environmental policies.
One of the earliest global agreements to recognise the importance of peatlands for protection was the Ramsar Convention (1971) that promoted the establishment and management of a network of protected wetlands. In 1996, it was reported that though peatlands represented 50% of the world's freshwater and terrestrial wetlands, less than 10% of the designated Ramsar sites had peatland as their dominant habitat (Chapter 15). Given continuing peatland loss and degradation, Contracting Parties set out guidelines to improve peatland protection (Ramsar 2003).
Research agendas for the sustainable management of tropical peatland in Malaysia
- RORY PADFIELD, SUSAN WALDRON, SIMON DREW, EFFIE PAPARGYROPOULOU, SHASHI KUMARAN, SUSAN PAGE, DAVE GILVEAR, ALONA ARMSTRONG, STEPHANIE EVERS, PAUL WILLIAMS, ZURIATI ZAKARIA, SING YUN CHIN, SUNE BALLE HANSEN, AHIMSA CAMPOS-ARCEIZ, MOHD TALIB LATIF, ALEX SAYOK, MUN HOU THAM
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- Journal:
- Environmental Conservation / Volume 42 / Issue 1 / March 2015
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 28 February 2014, pp. 73-83
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There is a need for coordinated research for the sustainable management of tropical peatland. Malaysia has 6% of global tropical peat by area and peatlands there are subject to land use change at an unprecedented rate. This paper describes a stakeholder engagement exercise that identified 95 priority research questions for peatland in Malaysia, organized into nine themes. Analysis revealed the need for fundamental scientific research, with strong representation across the themes of environmental change, ecosystem services, and conversion, disturbance and degradation. Considerable uncertainty remains about Malaysia's baseline conditions for peatland, including questions over total remaining area of peatland, water table depths, soil characteristics, hydrological function, biogeochemical processes and ecology. More applied and multidisciplinary studies involving researchers from the social sciences are required. The future sustainability of Malaysian peatland relies on coordinating research agendas via a ‘knowledge hub’ of researchers, strengthening the role of peatlands in land-use planning and development processes, stricter policy enforcement, and bridging the divide between national and provincial governance. Integration of the economic value of peatlands into existing planning regimes is also a stakeholder priority. Finally, current research needs to be better communicated for the benefit of the research community, for improved societal understanding and to inform policy processes.