Peatland Justice Campaign

Peatlands are the planet’s largest terrestrial carbon store. They are spectacular biodiversity hubs, centres of community life, preservers of past climates and civilisations, and provide a habitable world for future generations. Yet, many peatlands globally are in degraded states because the critical understanding of the ecological and cultural significance of these ecosystems was missing in past centuries and remains incomplete to this day. Peatlands were drained in favour of other types of use, and the peat layers were massively reduced. This increasing degradation is connected to a critical lack of understanding in both the public and policy sphere about the multiple values and functions of healthy peatlands, as well as a lack of solutions that combine social, ecological, and economic dynamics. 

RE-PEAT’s Peatland Justice campaign seeks to bridge this gap by working with local actors and stakeholders across disciplines and borders to co-create a peatland justice framework. The key focal point of EU horticultural peat soils will be used to open up larger conversations about equitable peatland value chains across Europe. The activities will be designed to collectively create and visualise just economic streams with an array of stakeholders across the political spectrum. Through these activities we aim to spark meaningful change within the horticultural industry, focusing on pushing for change within the retail sector. We call upon the retail sector to stock peat-free soils and halt sales of potting soil containing peat.

A key output from the campaign will be a deep map which describes the supply chain of peat products, the trade routes, alongside folklore, geographical information, interviews, science, and future visions. The current information available on potting soil and other products that contain peat is very opaque, with the amounts, source, type and impact all difficult to ascertain. The map makes the trade dynamics visible and visual in a new way, bringing in stories and other components to appeal to a wide audience and capture the broader picture of peat trade and peatlands in Europe, allowing the social and ecological dynamics to be included.