By Fred Pearce
Europe’s many degraded wet places are leaking carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on a huge scale. If Europe’s climate targets are to be met, then the continent’s forgotten mires and bogs, marshes and fens, must be restored, say scientists engaged in WET HORIZONS.
by Fred Pearce
From the Balmoral royal estate in the Scottish highlands to bogs of the Biebrza valley in northeast Poland, and from the frozen peatlands of northern Finland to the Rhine delta in the Netherlands, many of Europe’s degraded wet places are leaking carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on a huge scale. We must call a halt.
Reading the 2022 report by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) it becomes increasingly clear: the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius cannot be achieved by only reducing carbon levels. Other mitigation methods such as carbon capture and storage are necessary to realistically reach our climate change goals.