Why the World’s Peatlands are Key to Stopping Climate Change

August 20, 2020 / activist360 / Leave a comment

*Montane Peatland, Polblue Swamp, Barrington Tops National Park by Doug Beckers (CC BY-SA 2.0).*

By Gustaf Hugelius, Senior Lecturer, Physical Geography, Stockholm University, World Economic Forum published in collaboration with The Conversation (Public License).

Peatlands count for just a few percent of the world’s land, but crucially store almost one-quarter of soil carbon.
They play a vital role in regulating the climate, but they’re under threat.
A new study from Stockholm University has shown that rising temperatures will mean peatlands will soon start emitting more carbon than they store.
Researchers found that by limiting global warming, the worst could be avoided.

Peatlands cover just a few percent of the global land area but they store almost one-quarter of all soil carbon and so play a crucial role in regulating the climate. My colleagues and I have just produced the most accurate map yet of the world’s peatlands – their depth, and how much greenhouse gas they have stored. We found that global warming will soon mean that these peatlands start emitting more carbon than they store.

Peatlands form in areas where waterlogged conditions slow down the decomposition of plant material and peat accumulates. This accumulation of carbon-rich plant remains has been especially strong in northern tundra and taiga areas where they have helped cool the global climate for more than 10,000 years. Now, large areas of perennially frozen (permafrost) peatlands are thawing, causing them to rapidly release the freeze-locked carbon back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane.

Geoscientists have studied peatlands for a long time. They’ve looked at why some areas have peat but others don’t and they’ve looked at how peatlands work as natural archives through which we can reconstruct what the climate and vegetation was like in the past (or even what human life was life: many well-preserved ancient humans have been found in peat bogs).

Scientists have also long recognised that peatlands are important parts of the global carbon cycle and the climate. When plants grow they absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere and as this material accumulates in the peat, there is less carbon in the atmosphere and therefore the climate will cool in the long-term.

With all this knowledge about how important northern peatlands are, it is perhaps surprising to learn that, until recently, there was no comprehensive map of their depth and how much carbon they store. That is why I led an international group of researchers who put together such a map, which we can use to estimate how the peatlands will respond to global warming. Our work is now published in the journal PNAS.

Peatland data and properties north of 23°N latitude. (A) Estimated areal coverage (in percentage) of peatlands based on the national soil inventory maps and SoilGrids250m. (B) Estimated areal coverage (in percentage) of permafrost in mapped peatlands based on the national soil inventory maps and SoilGrids250m, including a maximum threshold for permafrost at MAAT +1 °C (use the same legend as in A). (C) Spatial distribution of peat core sites with peat depth data (n = 7,111) and peat organic C storage (n = 782) over a map of biome distributions (biomes adapted from ref. 32). Sites with peat N stock data (n = 105) are not shown in the map (see Dataset S6), but are predominantly located in boreal forest and tundra biomes. (D) Sites with peat organic C storage data, with the size of site symbols proportional to measured peat organic C storage, over a map of permafrost zonation (33). (E) Estimated total peatland C storage and (F) permafrost peatland C storage. Source: Gustaf Hugelius, et al., PNAS (CC BY 4.0).

Peatlands are surprisingly difficult to map as their growth is connected to many different local factors, such as how water drains in the landscape. This meant we had to gather more than 7,000 field observations and use new statistical models based on machine learning to create the maps.

We found that peatlands cover approximately 3.7 million square kilometres. If it were a country, “Peatland” would be slightly larger than India. These peatlands also store approximately 415 gigatons (billion tons) of carbon – as much as is stored in all the world’s forests and trees together.

Almost half of this northern peatland carbon is presently in permafrost, ground that is frozen all year round. But, as the world warms and permafrost thaws, it causes peatlands to collapse and completely changes how they relate to greenhouse gases. Areas that once cooled the atmosphere by storing carbon would instead release more of both CO₂ and methane than they stored. We found that the thaw projected from future global warming will cause releases of greenhouse gas that overshadow and reverse the carbon dioxide sink of all northern peatlands for several hundred years. The exact timing of this switch is still highly uncertain, but it is likely to happen in the later half of this century.

There are regions of very extensive permafrost peatlands in Western Siberia and around Hudson Bay in Canada. These unique environments and ecosystems will be fundamentally changed as the permafrost thaws, and their characteristic mix of frozen peat mounds and small lakes will be replaced by extensive areas of wet fens.

*Sampling peatland in Siberia. Gustaf Hugelius, Author provided.*

These changes will cause more CO₂ and methane to be released into the atmosphere as the previously frozen peat becomes available for microbes that degrade it. The thaw will also lead to large losses of peat into rivers and streams, which will influence both the food chains and biochemistry of inland waters and the Arctic Ocean.

These new finding further reinforce how urgent it is to rapidly reduce our emissions, as the only way to stop permafrost thaw is to limit global warming. There are no geoengineering solutions that can be deployed in these vast and remote areas. Our results clearly show that more limited global warming of 1.5℃-2℃ would be much less damaging than our current trajectories of 3℃-4℃ degrees or above.

How Language Digital Activism Can Play a Role in the International Decade of Indigenous Languages

August 3, 2020 / activist360 / Leave a comment

Global Voices, through its Rising Voices initiative, with the support of the Canadian Embassy in Mexico, presents a series of online conversations focusing on how indigenous communities in Mexico and Canada have been adopting technology and the internet as tools to promote and revitalize their native languages benefitting and impacting a new generation of potential speakers. These conversations will be an opportunity to engage with key language activists and advocates from Mexican indigenous and Canadian First Nations communities who have been utilizing the internet, digital media, and technology to promote and revitalize their languages. The conversations will also highlight the possibilities for cross-regional learning and exchange.

At the recent UNESCO meeting in Mexico City to kick off planning for the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, one of the working groups focused on the role of digital technologies and indigenous media in the campaign. This theme was also echoed throughout the proceedings in discussions about the importance of reaching and involving young people, a key ingredient in language vitality.

Language digital activism has been playing an increasingly important role in the overall strategy of language revitalization. Young people have been employing digital tools and taking do-it-yourself approaches to creating content in their languages and outreach to others. Resources such as digital language activism toolkit in development is one such approach to building capacity for young leaders to play a central role during this next decade.

With approximately 18 months to go before the start of the International Decade and the continued focus on the potential of digital technologies and the internet, what are the strategies needed to take things to the next level? How can language advocates partner successfully with policymakers to make a meaningful impact?

Melting Ice – the Future of the Arctic

October 9, 2019 / activist360 / Leave a comment

https://youtu.be/U0aNeYZL8jY

Climate change in the Arctic is fueling not only fear, but also hope. Sea levels will rise and flood many regions. But the melting ice will also expose new land with reserves of oil, gas and minerals. New sea routes are also emerging.

The melting of the ice in the far north has given reason for great optimism, as newly-found mineral resources promise the Inuit a better life. But international corporations and self-proclaimed ‘partners’ such as China also have their eye on the treasures of the Arctic. Some even dream of a polar Silk Road. As large corporations position themselves to exploit the treasures of the far north, the indigenous people, the Inuit, are fighting for their independence.

The DW Documentary team spent four weeks with a geological expedition to the north coast of Canada – a place where no human has ever set foot before – and were present at the geologists world’s northernmost spring. A microbiologist with them also collected DNA samples that could help in the development of new vaccines against resistant germs. However, the most important resource in the far north is still fish: Greenland supplies half the world with it, yet it still doesn’t bring in enough to finance necessary investments in its underdeveloped infrastructure. And in Canada, the Inuit are also struggling with their government for the right to share in the wealth of their own land.