International biodiversity policies have evolved with different contexts and motivations. Moving from a strictly biodiversity-centred focus, with the creation of early national parks, they now include people and their needs in the conservation policy perspective. Here we provide a brief history over the last 50 years of the development of global United Nations conventions. Focusing on the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD),the recent establishment of the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the 2030 Agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), we explore how these three institutions function and align. We discuss the role of science and evidence in decision-making and review current developments. Finally, we provide an outlook of how scientists can actively engage to provide science impact in advancing conservation policy-making.

Introduction

The conservation and management of peatlands by practitioners is often assumed to work best when guided by science (e.g. Maltby 1997). However, there are also many excellent peatland management and restoration projects, which have built upon years of practical experience (sometimes through trial and error), undertaken by organisations involved in hands-on peatland conservation. Parry, Holden and Chapman (2014) provide many examples of techniques developed through common sense and ingenuity on the part of practitioners, often with little input from the science community. Often restoration projects have to make progress well before the science is fully understood. Significant investment is being poured into peatland management projects across the world (Parish et al. 2008), and it is important for those investing resources in peatland environments that there is some evaluation of the impacts of such investment. Evaluating the success of peatland management projects may involve the scientific community (e.g. taking measurements of carbon fluxes). In many instances, however, practitioners may involve less stringent measures with success measured by recording some simple visible changes to the landscape. The evaluation of success may indeed be an economic one (Kent 2000) based on cost–benefit analyses (Christie et al. 2011) of, for example, money spent on restoration that has been or will be saved elsewhere through, for instance, improved water quality entering water company treatment works. The observations for measuring peatland conservation success may depend on spatial and temporal scale, geographic settings and project targets, as well as available expertise and funding. There are therefore questions about how we measure success and how scientists, practitioners and policy makers can work closely together to deliver the best outcomes for peatland ecosystem services. Careful attention should be given to the mechanisms for science knowledge exchange between science and practical application so that practical experience and knowledge by those managing peatlands is transferred into the scientific understanding of peatlands. Scientists value the opinions and ideas of the restoration community and there have been recent attempts to move towards improved co-design of research and co-production of knowledge of science and practitioner communities in peatland restoration environments (Reed 2008; Reed et al. 2009).

Taking an ecosystem services approach to peatland conservation means that scientists, practitioners and policy makers have to understand the wider interconnectedness of peatland processes that lead to the provision of goods and services to society.

Setting the scene

In September 1997, the airports of Singapore and Kuala Lumpur shut down for several days. Fires from drained peatlands in Indonesia, over 1000 km away, were emitting vast clouds of smoke causing haze and poor visibility across large parts of South East Asia in the extremely dry El Niño year. Schools and businesses had to close, and people were admitted to hospitals with acute breathing problems. The amount of CO2 emitted from these fires was equivalent to 13–40% of annual global emissions from fossil fuels (Page et al. 2002). Economic losses due to the 1997–1998 wildfires exceeded several billion US dollars (ADB 1999).

In the hot August of 2010, people in Moscow were advised to stay at home, keep their windows closed and wear gauze masks to avoid inhaling ash particles when walking on the streets. Again the cause was fires, this time raging across nearly 2000 km2 of degraded peatlands in Russia. Carbon monoxide levels in the capital reached six times the maximum acceptable levels and death rates doubled due to heat and smog (Barriopedro et al. 2011).

These fires, resulting from peatland drainage and degradation that made them vulnerable to fire, dramatically highlight the huge liability that peatlands pose once degraded, especially in a changing climate. In sharp contrast, there is now wide recognition of the importance to human well-being of ecosystem services delivered by the peatland environment, not least the wildlife that underpins those ecosystem services. While peatlands cover not even 3% of the world’s surface, they hold two times more carbon than the entire global forest biomass pool, and represent more than 30% of the total global soil carbon store (see Chapter 4). As long-term carbon sinks, they provide crucial global climate-regulating services. If not safeguarded, however, the release of this carbon could further exacerbate climate change.

The range of peatland ecosystem services is far greater than simply their role in the carbon cycle. Pivotal peatland ecosystem services further include, for example, the provision of high-quality drinking water derived from peatland catchments. Peatlands also play a role in flood-water regulation, especially in lowland or coastal settings.

Introduction

The chapters of this book provide a compelling account of the crucial role of peatlands for human well-being and the role restoration can play in providing nature-based solutions to societal goals. Across the world, natural peatlands provide important ecosystem services, with a special role in climate regulation, water regulation, provision of cultural services, such as historical archives and recreation opportunities, and hosting important habitats for wildlife. In contrast, damaged peatlands on only 0.3% of the earth's land surface contribute disproportionally to global GHG emissions, producing probably up to 50% of the total global land bound and 5% of the total global annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Degraded peatlands therefore pose a high risk and, ultimately, a high cost to society.

At the heart of peatland degradation is the unsustainable exploitation of peatland resources, mainly to maximise provisioning services for agricultural and forestry produce (Chapters 2 and 9–14). There are still perverse incentives and economic drivers in place fostering short-term profits (Chapters 2, 15 and 19), while neglecting consequences for global natural capital and sustainable livelihoods. The speed of degradation is alarming, especially in the tropics. Natural peatland habitats in Indonesia have shrunk to just 32% of the original peatland area, with most of those losses occurring in the last two decades as peatlands are drained and logged and converted to oil palm or pulpwood plantations. These plantations often cannot be sustained for more than one or a few production cycles, because subsidence eventually makes drainage of the low-lying peat soils impossible (Chapter 14). In temperate Europe, the majority of the peatlands has already been degraded by land use and land-use change over the past 150 years (Chapters 2, 10, 12). In Canada, recent technological advances and a desire for energy independence have meant that tar sand extraction will destroy peatlands to a significant extent. Also in Europe some of the remaining peatlands remain under current threat from the energy industry.

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).