UK's damaged peat bogs adding to global warming

The United Kingdom's aim of improving its carbon footprint by creating new forests is likely to fail; and not because of growing levels of pollution but as a result of the nation's plentiful peat bogs.

The bogs, a natural phenomenon, are likely to produce emissions of carbon in the coming years that will eclipse those absorbed by the nation's expanding woodlands, according to the countryside charity CPRE, which was formerly known as the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

The organization said peatlands have become degraded because of human activity, such as drainage and farming, and carbon trapped in them for millennia is seeping into the atmosphere.

It said a properly-functioning peat bog soaks up carbon and traps it, but dried-out bogs, such as many in the UK, produce carbon instead of absorbing it.

Tom Fyans, a CPRE spokesperson, said: "The government has paid too little attention to emissions from peatland. As things stand, they aren't even properly included in current emissions monitoring."

Fyans said the fact that the contribution from peat bogs has been largely ignored "seriously threatens the effectiveness of other nature-based solutions, like tree-planting, in tackling the climate emergency".

He told the BBC: "We need much greater levels of investment in restoring or rewetting peatlands, and we need a strategy for a fair and managed transition to move businesses away from dependency on destructive use of peatlands."

Both the government's advisory committee on climate change and the CPRE want the government to protect and enhance the UK's peatlands, which are wetlands full of living peat-forming plants and partially decomposed organic matter.

The CPRE believes UK peatlands produce around 18.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year, which is around the same amount as the UK's ambitious tree-planting program aims to capture.

It said there is no point planting trees if the nation is failing to protect and enhance its peat bogs. The charity believes a crucial part of that protection will come if the government bans the use of peat for garden compost. The horticulture industry has voluntarily agreed to stop using peat for compost but has, so far, not delivered.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the government department responsible for protecting the countryside, said it understands the importance of healthy peatlands in the climate change battle and has committed 640 million pounds ($836 million) to restoring 35,000 hectares of peatland by 2025.

It said the UK also plans to phase out the use of peat in horticulture by 2030.

Experts say the UK's damaged peatlands are contributing around 5 percent of the nation's carbon emissions. They say, if the peatlands were healthy, they should contribute no carbon and actually absorb carbon produced elsewhere.