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16 - Valuing peatland ecosystem services
- from Part III - Socio-economic and political solutions to managing natural capital and peatland ecosystem services
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- By Sabine Wichmann, University of Greifswald, Germany, Luke Brander, Institute for Environmental Studies, VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Achim Schäfer, Greifswald Mire Centre, Germany, Marije Schaafsma, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK, Pieter van Beukering, Institute for Environmental Studies, VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands., Dugald Tinch, University of Sterling, UK, Aletta Bonn, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)
- 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 314-338
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
Throughout history, peatlands have been inhospitable places for humans; feared as wilderness, despised as wasteland and often remained as unsettled borderlands (Silvius, Joosten and Opdam 2008). They became seen as valuable only since being drained for agriculture, forestry or peat extraction. This biased focus on direct provisioning services has long ignored the destructive effects of peatland exploitation on regulating and cultural services (e.g. loss of biodiversity, emissions of CO2 and nutrients, declining water quality and quantity).
The degradation of ecosystem functions inspired the recognition of human dependence on nature (e.g. Leopold 1949; Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1981; De Groot 1992; Daily 1997) and stimulated attempts to include ecosystem values in planning and political decision making (e.g. Krutilla 1967; Krutilla and Fisher 1975; Pearce and Nash 1981). Over the last two decades the concept of ecosystem services (Chapter 1) and their valuation have raised increasing interest. Within the scientific community it is represented by an exponential growth in publications (Fisher, Turner and Morling 2009). In addition, the policy world has boosted the concept by initiating major comprehensive studies such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005), The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB 2008, 2010) and several initiatives on the national scale such as the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA). Launching the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) established an interface between the scientific community and policy makers comparable to the IPCC. It reflects as much the hope as the political challenge connected to the ecosystem service approach bridging nature conservation and human well-being.
This chapter aims to introduce the concept of ecosystems service valuation to readers with no economic background, gives an overview of valuation studies on peatlands, including three case studies Boxes 16.2 – 16.4), shows that expressing damage to peatlands as welfare costs provides economic reasons for conservation and restoration, and identifies instruments for the remuneration of benefits provided by functioning peatlands.
Valuing nature
The great variety of benefits derived from ecosystems is reflected by the distinction between economic value (welfare), socio-cultural value (well-being) and ecological value (ecosystem integrity and life-support functions) (e.g. MA 2005; De Groot et al. 2006). The valuation of ecosystem services integrates ecology (understanding and quantification), ethics (e.g. intergenerational justice), politics (setting objectives) as well as economics, psychology and sociology (disclosing the underlying values and motivations of people).
17 - Paludiculture: sustainable productive use of wet and rewetted peatlands
- from Part III - Socio-economic and political solutions to managing natural capital and peatland ecosystem services
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- By Hans Joosten, University of Greifswald, Greta Gaudig, University of Greifswald, Germany, Franziska Tanneberger, Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology, Ernst Moritz Arndt, Sabine Wichmann, University of Greifswald, Germany, Wendelin Wichtmann, Michael Succow Foundation Greifswald, Germany
- Edited by Aletta Bonn, Tim Allott, University of Manchester, Martin Evans, University of Manchester, Hans Joosten, Rob Stoneman
-
- Book:
- Peatland Restoration and Ecosystem Services
- Published online:
- 05 June 2016
- Print publication:
- 23 June 2016, pp 339-357
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
The origin of mainstream Western agriculture lies in the ‘fertile crescent’ of the Middle East and, in this cradle of arable farming, dryland plants were domesticated that currently constitute some of our major cereal, legume and fibre crops. This ‘semi-desert’ agriculture installed the idea that productive land must be dry, a paradigm that ever since has been applied also to wet, organic soils. We deeply drain peatland to grow arid maize Zea mays in Germany, strongly water-demanding sugar cane Saccharum spp. in Florida and the desert species Aloe vera in Indonesia. Practices like this have made agriculture the main driver of global peatland loss (Joosten and Clarke 2002, Chapter 2) and drained peatlands are thus primarily found in regions that are climatically favourable for agriculture, i.e. in the temperate zone and the (sub)tropics (Chapter 2).
Peatland drainage causes inherent peatland degradation, a substantial financial and environmental burden and eventually the loss of the productive value of the peat soil (Joosten, Tapio-Biström and Tol 2012). These problems are increasingly being recognised: worldwide several thousands of square kilometres of drained agricultural peatlands have been rewetted in recent years for climate change mitigation, for biodiversity, or simply because maintaining drainage infrastructure had become too expensive. Rewetting has indeed re-established major regulating and cultural services of wet peatlands, including carbon storage, flood control, water purification, archive function and biodiversity (Theuerkauf et al. 2006; Limpens et al. 2008; Trepel 2010; Tanneberger and Wichtmann 2011; Joosten et al. 2015a; Chapter 6). The provisioning services of these formerly productive lands, however, were mostly lost as the rewetted areas were generally earmarked for nature conservation with the condition that they would no longer be used agriculturally.
On the other hand, the quest for productive land is rapidly growing worldwide. This demand will continue to increase, because of the inevitable growth of human population and the justified demands for food security and more welfare. The demand will also grow, because biomass from cultivated land will increasingly have to replace the resources that until now were obtained from the wilderness (wood, non-timber forest products, bushmeat) and the bedrock (coal, oil, gas, minerals). Both the persistent use of drained peatlands for agriculture and the conversion of agriculturally used peatlands to unused wetlands imply that we are losing productive land at a time when we need it most.