A few weeks ago, I was invited by Rach Allan to join her 40 for Tea podcast, showcasing women working on topics that inspire her. She’d remembered conversations we’d had in the past about peat and the importance of soils, and so invited me along to her podcast kingdom to have a chat about these topics over tea. Here is the episode. And below is the introduction Rach wrote to advertise it on LinkedIn…
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Do you remember I talked about feeling overwhelmed? With the Climate conversation And everything else.
I had started drinking tea To get to a different kind of truth of the matter. Talking to people rather than Be bamboozled by all the digital noise.
I promised to share what I found out, whilst having tea, with incredible humans across the globe. Simple moments.
This season has been with Powerhouse Women. Normal women, Overcoming adversity Who are upto stuff. Warrior women.
Consider it a beginners guide & an experts guide. Why Peatlands are SO important to our survival on this planet. An invitation to listen while making a nice cup of tea.
Learn something new about this incredible planet What we CAN do. There’s some key tools & signposts you can use in the shownotes.
#40fortea is a side hustle. Exploring voices & perspectives on being human in this new decade. Its an evolving journey. Who do you think I should have a cuppa with next?
To kick off what has already been an incredible year on many fronts (!), I was tasked with writing a post for the International Peatland Society’s blog, in my role as the Coordinator of the Peatlands and Biodiversity Expert Group within the organisation. Mark Harrison joined me in extracting some positive news about peatlands from 2020, to inspire us to keep speaking up for swamps in the year ahead. (The piece below is being reposted from the IPS blog, accessed here.) Onwards, and bog-wards.
As we say goodbye to 2020, to what has been an incredibly and unpredictably challenging year in many ways for many people, it is important to sift through the muddy (swamp) waters for positive news. For peatlands, the last 12 months have provided many sources of hope. Various happenings have brought the societal relevance of peatlands further into the public eye, and shone light on some of the great work of peatland scientists and practitioners across the world. Here are a few highlights (hopefully you also know of many more!).
There is a passionate campaign underway to make The Flow Country into a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) announced in July that it will support the bid to UNESCO to consider this vast area of blanket bog as a significant jewel in humanity’s crown. If The Flow Country peatlands, which cover 2,000 km2 within the region of Caithness and Sutherland in northern Scotland, are given World Heritage Site status, they will enjoy increased resources for their protection and restoration (supporting further excellent work such as this), and helping the UK to achieve its net zero climate targets. The campaign team are busy working on the nomination materials, which will be reviewed by the UNESCO Committee in 2023. In the meantime whilst we await their decision, the RSPB’s Forsinard Flows reserve continues to provide access to this wonderful site (in the absence of Covid-restrictions!).
This year has seen noteworthy articles published that raise awareness of the importance of peatlands as an irrecoverable carbon stock (Goldstein et al., 2020), highlight the importance of better understanding peatland carbon dynamics and incorporating them into global climate models (Loisel et al., 2020), evaluate the relative impacts of incentive vs. deterrent interventions on peat fire outcomes (Carmenta et al., 2020), and assess the value of understanding people’s engagement with peatlands and the reasons behind “caring for Cinderella” (Byg et al., 2020). In addition to these, and of central relevance to this year’s main news story, Harrison et al. (2020) published an article describing the role that tropical peatlands play in the context of global disease pandemics.
Covid-19 has touched us all, including the communities living in the World’s peatlands. Working with an international team of co-authors (including us both), Harrison et al. (2020), make apposite connections between the current Covid-19 pandemic and tropical peatlands drawing attention to the consequences of neglecting this globally important ecosystem in these challenging times. We describe how tropical peatlands could prove a potential source of zoonotic emerging infectious diseases in the future, with wildlife harvesting and habitat degradation bringing people into contact with potential animal vectors. Of more immediate effect, we describe the likely/ensuing impacts that the Covid-19 pandemic is already having on communities living in and around tropical peatlands. Food security, health provisioning and livelihoods have been compromised by the interruptions to transport resulting from the pandemic within the peatlands of Borneo and the Peruvian Amazon. Peatland research, restoration and conservation have also all been disrupted, increasing the susceptibility of already degraded peatland areas to fire and illegal activities. On a positive note, the article concludes by providing specific recommendations on how tropical peatlands can be managed to mitigate the risks of this pandemic and potential future ones. Hopefully these recommendations will be heeded.
Many tropical peatland areas are vulnerable to the impacts, whether directly or indirectly, of Covid-19 (Harrison et al., 2020). A remote tropical peatland community in Buenos Aires (upper image), within the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve, Peruvian Amazon, which is accessible only by boat. People living here and in neighbouring communities rely heavily on resources extracted from the surrounding peat-forming Mauritia flexuosa palm swamps. Urarina indigenous groups living in peat-rich areas, harvest palm leaves from which to make textiles (lower image); important both practically and culturally for these isolated communities. The palms also offer plentiful food for wild fauna and thus the palm swamps in which they grow are important hunting spaces for people, providing bushmeat in locations far from the nearest market. Photo credits: Lydia Cole.
Finally, the UK Government has been put under further pressure recently to ban peat compost for amateur gardeners. The UK aimed to phase out peat compost for home use in England this year, but the target was only voluntary, meaning political will is limited and enforcement non-existent. Campaignsdrawing attention to this Government failing are helping to ensure it does not go unnoticed.
Despite these ‘wins’ for peatlands in 2020, there remain many challenges to protecting these invaluable ecosystems sufficiently from degrading human activities (for example in the Congo basinand Indonesian Borneo). Continuing to bring peatlands into public view and onto national and international policy agendas is vital, and one that the International Peatland Society is committed to as we dive into 2021.
Dr. Lydia Cole, Coordinator IPS Biodiversity Expert Group University of St. Andrews
Dr. Mark E. Harrison University Of Exeter, Cornwall
On 26th November 2020, I had some fun getting stuck into the Scottish Research Showcase. It involved creating a short video that represented an aspect of my work. So I created the (rather naff!) introduction to peatlands that’s embedded in the tweet below. There were some fantastically creative videos made by other Scotland-based researchers, so I’d recommend browsing #Exploration20 #GlobalScienceShow tweets from the day (e.g. one researcher tells their story via an animation in the form of crochet!). I have much to learn about, and from, the boundless and fun world of science communication!
Re-posting here a quick plug I made for World Peatlands Day on the Tropical Wetlands Consortium blog. Any excuse to post about peat.
Tuesday 2nd June, 2020, marked the first ever World Peatlands Day – a celebration of all things boggy, swampy, sucky, blanket-y, fen-y, etc. The International Peatland Society launched the event in August 2019, to draw attention to peatlands as being a unique ecosystem type, with a unique set of values and challenges associated with their sustainable management, and thus deserving of a separate international day of recognition. The longer-established World Wetlands Day happens on 2nd February every year, bringing the vast range of wetlands into the public eye; ecosystems that we all interact with and rely on in some way. Peatlands are one major part of that story.
In celebration of the day, re-peat put on Peat-Fest, a very impressive 24 hours of online peat-related fun. The British Ecological Society’s Peatlands Research and Conservation Ecology Groups co-hosted a peat- and conservation-themed quiz (part-organised and attended by members of the Tropical Wetlands Consortium). Here are a few popular tweets illustrating yesterday’s celebration….
But if World Peatlands Day passed you by, don’t fear; there are plenty more days to celebrate peatlands to come*. International BogDay is on Sunday 26th July, the World Bogsnorkelling Championships (now cancelled) are usually in mid-Wales (UK) on the August Bank Holiday weekend, and in July of 2021, the Swamp Soccer World Championships is to be held in Finland. Do let us know if you spot more opportunities to celebrate these important ecosystems, in the Global North, South or swamps.
On 7th March B.C., during those heady days of frollocking in the sun/rain-shine, wholesome hugs and re-usable coffee cups, the University of St Andrews held a Science Discovery Day. I was unable to attend unfortunately, but put together a poster for my research group – the Tropical Wetlands Consortium – to pop up as part of their peat paraphernalia. Below are two copies of the poster: (a) the poster before our seven year old consultant checked it for readability by the society members he was representing; (b) the revised version, edited in response to his valuable feedback. There are four major differences. Can you spot them (click on images to enlarge)? And understand why the items in (a) weren’t accessible to our next generation of budding scientists? The feedback was eye-opening for me, and I shall now be using this consultant regularly to accessibility-check my primary school-level outreach work.
Earlier this year, as a result of making friends at a conference years ago, I had the privilege of working with a bunch of the world’s most knowledgeable peat-ple on this article for the FAO, published to coincide with COP25: Peatlands: the challenge of mapping the world’s invisible stores of carbon and water. (Page 46-57 in the linked document).
Our main message, watered-down, is that mapping peatlands is no easy task and there is still much work to do on the ground, and across the globe….but we are fast working on these knowledge gaps and know enough about the important role that peatlands play in mitigating climatic change that we would be fools to let them squander.
Nearing two years ago, I was made aware of the World Bog Snorkelling Championships (and popped out a quick post to my two-strong readership). Life has barely been recognisable since.
Back last year, on a heady day in late August (26/08/17, around 16:04:07), in the depths of mid-Wales, under the hot mid-afternoon sun (yes, sun and heat in Wales), I became the 2017 Female World Champion of Mountain Bike Bog Snorkelling.
Below is footage of my world-leading performance. (And might answer a few questions for the reader.)
It’s not as easy as I make it look.
And less than 24 hours later, having barely recovered from the previous day’s exertions, I competed, as an orangutan, in the World Bog Snorkelling Championships. I was aiming to raise awareness of the plight of the poster people of tropical peatlands.
Despite my (best?) efforts, I wasn’t the fastest female/primate in the bog, but I did come second in the Fancy Dress competition (more time having been spent on my costume than any form of snorkel training); the judges enjoyed my “tropical bird” costume….
My winning ORANGUTAN costume, in all of it’s glory pre-bog.
I am currently in training (starting from soon) for this year’s competition, and more carefully considering my choice of attire. If you are free in late August, I would strongly recommend you get involved. This year also sees the return of the biennial World Alternative Games. There is a competition for everyone, with options ranging from pooh sticks, to gravy wrestling, and finger jousting. I challenge you to find something you too can become a World Champion in.
There are few weekends in my rich life that have been as silly, as laughter-filled, boggy and friendly as this one I had the privilege to spend with the fantastic community of Llanwrtyd Wells.
Today is a day to celebrate and spread the word about our world’s wonderful wetlands.
Borrowed from the World Wetlands Day website. (Thank you!)
On this day 46 years ago, the Convention on Wetlands was adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar. Since then, the 2nd February has marked the signing of this Ramsar Convention: “an international treaty that provides the framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources”.
Wetlands are increasingly acknowledged for their importance in controlling the quality and quantity of water flowing across landscapes, as reflected by the theme of this year’s World Wetlands Day: Wetlands for Disaster Risk Reduction. They are also important for biodiversity conservation, for filtering pollutants from water supplies and of course our magnificent peatlands are critical for sequestering and storing atmospheric carbon (in their intact form).
Perhaps it’s time for a World Peatlands Day?
To celebrate the day and how peatland management has changed in the UK and Ireland over the last few generations, from predominantly extraction to conservation, here is a poem by Seamus Heaney:
Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Though I don’t advocate digging drains in peatlands; in fact it’s pretty much the worst thing you can do to peat (as I’ve mentioned before and will again), if one was to have a drain in one’s peatland already, why not use it to host the World Bog Snorkelling Championships. I might start training for next year’s event.
The Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture (MICCA) programme of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), has a particularly special branch: the organic soils and peatlands climate change mitigation initiative. “Launched by FAO, the MICCA Programme and Wetlands International,(it) is an informal network of organizations and people committed to reducing emissions from peatlands and safeguarding the other vital ecosystem services that peatlands provide.” They have produced all sorts of reports, e.g. on sustainable peatland management, presentations from webinars, case studies and infographics, e.g. this decision support tree, for use by any interested communities. Members of the initiative also have a keen presence at important gatherings of peatland scientists and practitioners, such as the IUCN UK Peatland Programme (near-)Annual Conference. Given the challenges of being a small cog in the big UN-monster, the group seems to be doing its best to support sustainable peatland management across the world.
If you’d like to join MICCA’s peatland community, set up to facilitate the exchange of experience and knowledge amongst the wider population of peat lovers, sign up here.
And I think their latest infographic should be made into an elongated tea towel, to educate the everyday dryer-upper of the threats to peat.
Make peat, not war 