Conference 2018

The opening session included a welcome from each host organisation and set the scene for discussing public benefit provision in relation to sustainable peatland management, communities and economy.

• National Parks: showcasing natural heritage and scenery - James Stuart  (Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park)
• Sustainable rural communities in Scotland - Francesca Osowska (Scottish Natural Heritage)
• A sustainable approach to peatlands - Dieter Helm (see video below)

This session explored how we account for public benefits and reward their provision through either the public purse or private investment.

• What do we mean by public benefits – especially those provided by peatlands? - Jo Pike (Scottish Wildlife Trust)
• What are the policy changes required to ensure we can reward for public benefits? - Tom Lancaster (RSPB)
• Farming and Public Benefits - Thomas Binns (NFU England)

This session provided examples of how peatlands benefit business – with a focus on the food and drink sector. This was an opportunity for businesses to talk about how they use the upland environment as both a source of their produce and in their branding and marketing. It explored what the key considerations are in successfully promoting produce – a valued public benefit of peatlands – and how the objectives of food and drink provision can link with sustainable peatland management and reach the public.

• Setting the scene - Vicki Swales (Food Coalition Scotland)
• Peatlands and Scotland’s drinking water supplies - Fraser Leith (Scottish Water)
• Using the natural landscapes to promote a product - Morag Garden (Scotch Whisky Association)
• Scotland’s food and drink strategy - Ceri Ritchie (Scotland’s Rural College)

This session provided an opportunity to explore why public attitudes are important – why do we care that people care about peatlands? Updates on research carried out on public attitudes and opinions in relation to peatlands, and their perception of the public benefits that they provide, were presented to spark discussion.  

• Peatlands and the public - Paula Novo (Scotland’s Rural College)
• Coupling biophysical models and socio-economic outcomes: lost in translation - Dylan Young (Tipping Points, University of Leeds)
• Methods of valuing the benefits of peatland restoration - Dave Chandler (Moors for the Future Partnership)

This session provided an opportunity to gather together and highlight the tools which are used to engender volunteer and public support at a local level. Presentations showcased how engaging volunteers and using public help efficiently can benefit bogs and people.

Local community groups shared their experiences of their local peatlands including: why they got involved; how they try to inspire others to get involved and the challenges they have faced. These recollections illustrated what’s special about their patch of peat and how their involvement is crucial in its survival.

• What are the opportunities for the community to benefit from peatlands? - Sue White (Shetland Amenity Trust)
• Increasing engagement with local community and education opportunities - Rebecca Crawford (BogSquad, Butterfly Conservation)
• How did Friends of Langlands Moss start and what are the benefits (motivations)? - Maureen Potter (Friends of Langlands Moss)

This session explored recent research work into the economic values placed on public benefits provided by peatlands and other habitats, and how these can be used to support their restoration and good management. It also provided a window into what public benefits private investors place a value on, and why they are interested in paying for restoration and conservation.

• Auditing peatlands: assessing their value - Hazel Trenbirth (Office for National Statistics)
• Economics of peatlands - Andrew Moxey (Pareto-consulting)
• Understanding the potential for private sector investment in natural capital – lessons from the Spey catchment - Anja Liski

This session included a series of short presentations from organisations at the forefront of visitor engagement on peatlands – focussing on the recreational, cultural and wellbeing benefits they provide.

• Opportunities and challenges of managing visitors on peatlands - Simon Gray (Fermanagh Council)
• Establishing a tourist attraction in a remote area - Caroline Eccles (Flows to the Future Project)
• Creating a landscape for people and nature in the Fens - Sarah Smith (Wicken Fen, National Trust)

This session provided updates on the progress made towards phasing out peat with examples from businesses and NGO’s including their key public communication messages, successes so far and ambitions to continue to drive progress.

Background: Defra introduced a voluntary target for amateur gardeners to phase out peat use by 2020 and a final phase out of 2030 for professional growers of fruit, vegetables and plants. This commitment was reaffirmed in Defra’s recent 25 Year Environment Plan, with a promise to look at introducing further measures if sufficient progress towards using peat alternatives has not been made by 2020. Scottish Government has also identified phasing out the horticultural use of peat as a priority in its work plan through the National Peatland Group.

With 2020 rapidly approaching, this session will shed light on the progress made towards meeting these targets and future work planned.

• Introduction - Olly Watts (RSPB)
• Making the Switch: Changing to Peat-Free Compost - Catherine Dawson (Melcourt Industries Ltd)
• Progress and challenges with peat replacement - Neil Bragg (Bulrush)
• Upping the Ante: What Action is Needed - Ben McCarthy (Plantlife)

Peatlands have many stories to tell – from archaeological Bronze Age discoveries to unveiling environmental records that reveal past climate change. This session shed a light on some of the key moments in our peatlands history and consider how these stories can be used to engage with a different audience.

• Peatlands as an environmental archive - Paul Hughes (University of Southampton)
• Cultural history hidden in peatlands - Ben Gearey (University of Cork)
• History of Foulshaw Moss, Cumbria - David Harpley (Cumbria Wildlife Trust)

This final plenary put the UK’s peatland work into a global context, with an introduction to the work of the Global Peatlands Initiative (GPI), of which the IUCN are a member. With a remit to save the world’s largest terrestrial organic carbon stock, and contribute to the delivery of several Sustainable Development Goals, the GPI has been actively promoting the peatland cause in countries with some of the largest extent of peatland. This session also looked at the strategic actions on peatlands being taken by countries around the world.

This session also provided a brief overview of the UK Peatland Strategy for those new to it and gave each of the four countries an opportunity to update delegates on the progress against each of the six goals set out in the strategy as well as highlights from national level plans. Speakers also identified steps being taken to enable reporting against the key goals.

• International perspective Overview of GPI & IUCN Resolution 43 – Dianna Kopansky (UN Environment)
• UK Peatland Strategy: overview and next steps - Clifton Bain (IUCN UK Peatland Programme)
• Highlights from Scotland: National Peatland Plan and Peatland Action - Andrew Coupar (Scottish Natural Heritage)
• Highlights from Wales: SMS and LIFE - Peter Jones (Natural Resources Wales)
• Highlights from Northern Ireland - Richard Weyl (Department of Agricuture, Environment and Rural Affairs)
• Highlights from England: New strategy and £10 million programme - David Hunter (Defra)

Land managers from different sectors provided their perspective on the public benefits that well managed peatlands can provide and how their work contributes to the provision of these. Speakers reflected on where the win-win opportunities lie to meet land management goals as well as peatland benefits - and what further support is need to enhance these opportunities.

• Benefits of peatlands from a land manager perspective - Anne Gray (Heather Trust)
• Managing peatlands to support the National Park targets - Simon Jones (Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park Authority)
• Managing land to provide better water - David Smith (South West Water)

Peatland Action and Yorkshire Peat Partnership shared their experiences of setting up large-scale restoration programmes, with a look at both the successes, but also challenges along the way and how these have been dealt with.

• How do you set up a large-scale restoration project? - Tim Thom (Yorkshire Peat Partnership)
• The practicalities: Peatland Action discuss setting up a large scale restoration programme - Andrew McBride and Emily Taylor (Scottish Natural Heritage)

Our ability to report on progress in delivering peatland objectives is vital not only to allow assessment and reporting against national and international targets such as climate change, and biodiversity but also to demonstrate that our investment in peatlands is providing quantifiable benefits.

The working group behind the Commission of Inquiry Update reports on the State of UK Peatlands and Biodiversity shared their findings in this session along with updates on monitoring progress from JNCC and insight into a new IUCN UK Peatland Programme initiative ‘Eyes on the Bog’ aimed at providing long term monitoring of peatland sites.

• Monitoring and Reporting on UK Peatlands - Paul Robinson (JNCC)
• Biodiversity Monitoring – Peter Jones (Natural Resources Wales)
• Eyes on the Bog - Richard Lindsay (University of East London) 

A broad pool of resources, skills and expertise will be required to enable the UK to continue to deliver the extensive peatland restoration needed in future. This session provided an opportunity for the peatland community to discuss what materials and training support is needed by existing and new practitioners to achieve best-practice peatland conservation now and in the future. 

What are the peatland restoration challenges that need to be resolved? What and where are the conflicting views and how do we resolve these as a community? 

This workshop started with a quick introduction to the Conserving Bogs handbook, available online and the restoration training courses being set up by the IUCN UK Peatland Programme.

• Conserving Bogs: An update - Tim Thom (Yorkshire Peat Partnership)
• Peatland training courses - Richard Lindsay (University of East London) 

As a common funding requirement and necessary way to address new challenges, this session focussed on sharing innovation to support conservation.

Peatland Action shared some of the innovative solutions they have come up with to address challenging restoration scenarios in Scotland. The speakers covered upland and lowland habitats as well as including techniques from the forestry and renewables sector.

• Innovation in Peatland Restoration with Peatland ACTION - Stephen Corcoran and Ewan Campbell (Scottish Natural Heritage)

This session focussed on climate change as one of the major drivers for peatland conservation and restoration with an update on the science around peatlands and carbon, and their role in relation to climate change.  Speakers also explored the response needed to a changing climate looking at how we can adapt lowland agriculture as well as the latest policy thinking around climate change adaptation and how this relates to peatlands generally.

• Carbon Report: findings – how we account for carbon - Chris Evans (Centre of Ecology and Hydrology)
• Changing land management practice: shifting to wetland agriculture - Deborah Land (Natural England)
• Adapting to climate change – Olly Watts (RSPB)

1. Peatlands are important to us all – our largest natural carbon store, homes for rare and threatened wildlife, cultural and ecological archives, water supply and management, places to enjoy and relax, and places local people identify with and an important part of the ‘brand’ for food and drink.

Terms such as public benefits, ecosystem services, Natural capital all define these peatland features in ways that communicate with particular audiences.

The challenge we face are:

• People don’t always make the connection between their lives or businesses and the role of peatlands. Peatlands are often considered as worthless or dangerous.
• The evidence around peatland benefits remains rather academic and needs to be made more easily communicated. The Commission of Inquiry review will be published in Spring 2019 as a tool to help provide the evidence to be used in communications.
• Many people and communities already do recognise and value peatlands especially those who work in around peatlands but also those who go to peatlands for pleasure.  We need to mobilise and give a voice to those who do enjoy and value peatlands.

2. We urgently need to take action – The UK Peatland Strategy and developing country plans set out a course of action.  There is an urgency to take these forward:

• The Paris Climate Agreement makes it clear we all need to do everything possible to reduce emissions – that means reducing the significant emissions from damaged peatlands. Declining biodiversity and the increased costs to society arising from damaged peatlands to drinking water and flood management also require urgent action.

3. Secure the right funding to repair peatlands now and avoid higher costs to society. At a time of great economic and policy uncertainty we need to make sure that decision makers and the public see the economic social and environmental case for action on peatlands. Two major policy areas need to be addressed:

• The value of peatlands to society isn’t reflected in the support received by those who manage them. There needs to be a shift towards payment for the public benefitsof peatlands  in both Rural landuse policy and private investment.
•  If we are to achieve the scale and speed of restoration required we need a step change in investment – with a combination of Government targeted funds for peatlands  – ‘challenge’ fund type grants such as Peatland Action as well as increased private funding.

4. Partnerships are a very effective way of supporting peatland restoration whether at the national level, regional or site level.  Funding support to maintain the knowledge, staff skills expertise of these partnerships is essential to delivering our peatland goals.

• The IUCN UK Peatland Programme is a national partnership and this series of conferences provides a platform for exchange of ideas and knowledge across policy makers, scientists and practitioners.  It also brings together more regional and local partnerships such as MFF, YPP, Exmoor mires, Flows to the Future and site partnerships such as Friends of Langlands moss.
• We need a ten year funding commitment to support a national framework of partnerships helping deliver restoration, building stakeholder support, providing advice, communicating the benefits and supporting science and survey.

5. The Business sector needs to be encouraged to recognise and invest in peatlands as an important part of securing their economic bottom line, whether that’s tackling climate change, supporting brand identity or avoiding infrastructure damage arising from flooding. The opportunities for staff and customers to see peatlands and peatland restoration first hand should be promoted.

6. We have the track record of delivering peatland restoration - Restoration of peatlands has been taking place for decades and we have the skills and knowledge to deliver great results with hundreds of fantastic demonstration projects each able to demonstrate different benefits.  They also provide a real opportunity to communicate peatland values

7. We need improved monitoring and survey to better quantify peatland benefits and to assess the impact of restoration and good management.  We also need better systems in place to monitor progress against our strategic goals and international obligations. Research funding for long term survey and routine monitoring is vital to properly understand the way in which peatlands respond to damaging and positive impacts, particularly in the face of climate change.

8. There is increasing global concern at the state of our peatlands with international initiatives looking to address the damage to peatlands including the United Nations, Global peatlands Initiative, Ramsar and the IUCN.  The UK is seen as a world leader in taking strategic action for peatlands as well as showcasing restoration successes.

9. The use of peat in horticulture is unsustainable. Targets to end the use of peat in the UK will not only help protect rare and threatened lowland peatland habitat but will also stimulate a new thriving horticulture supply industry based around sustainable products.