Around 80% of all UK peatlands have been significantly degraded as a result of how they are currently being managed and have been in the past.

The WaterLANDS UK team has produced a White Paper on the requirements for upscaled peatland restoration of England’s uplands, which has been shared with MPs, government agencies and other interested parties.

This White Paper outlines recommendations, based on evidence, to remove barriers to achieving successful restoration on a wide scale of vital peatland carbon stores and ecosystems found in the English uplands.

Key recommendations needed to deliver fully upscaled peatland restoration set out in the white paper include:

  • Increasing the use of evidence from the research community and develop and use spatial modelling tools throughout the restoration planning stage.
  • Ensuring that restoration projects are robustly monitored and evaluated and that data is shared effectively.
  • Developing robust financing and governance models that include long-term funding agreements to accelerate restoration and allow restoration projects to be phased over multiple years while retaining and building capacity.
  • Acknowledging that Landscape Recovery in its current form cannot deliver the scale and pace of peatland restoration currently seen under the Peatland Grant Scheme – and the Green Finance market is not mature enough to fill this gap.
  • Making community engagement a key pillar of peatland restoration that is integral to the restoration process – local peatland partnerships have a critical role.

One of the Co-Authors, Professor Julia Martin-Ortega, mentioned the need to recognise that all aspects of the restoration process involve people and relationships.

“The values that people hold for nature extend beyond exchange values for ecosystem services and frameworks other than monetary valuation and cost-benefit analysis can support decision making.”

The report states: ‘There is compelling evidence for the benefits of accelerating peatland restoration and upscaling it to entire landscapes, taking a long-term, strategic, regional approach.

‘If we are serious about restoring the remaining degraded upland peatlands in England in the shortest timeframe possible, we need to acknowledge that we currently lack a long-term mechanism to achieve this and that landscape recovery, in its current form, cannot achieve the required scale of delivery.’

You can download and read the full report here!