Accelerated Peatland Protection in Lower Saxony

The GMC supports the motion of B90/The Greens

15/3/2022 The GMC supports the motion of B90/Greens Yesterday, the Greifswald Mire Centre and other experts were invited to a hearing in the Environment Committee of the Lower Saxony Parliament to comment on the motion of the Bündnis 90/ Die Grünen parliamentary group "Peatland protection = species protection + climate protection" (Drs. 18/10170). Since Lower Saxony owns about 670,000 hectares of organic soils and is thus the German federal state richest in peatlands. The peatlands are predominantly used agriculturally, especially as grassland, and drained for this purpose. These areas thus cause high greenhouse gas emissions, which makes Lower Saxony frontrunner in terms of greenhouse gas emissions from organic soils among the federal states. Only rewetting can stopp these emissions. In the past 40 years, an average of 950 hectares of peatland per year have been rewetted, and the GMC calculates that 20,000 hectares per year need to be rewetted in order to achieve the Paris climate protection targets. In the GMC’s statement supports the motion of Bündnis 90/ Die Grünen in many points and explains further ones in order to substantially accelerate the peatland protection in Lower Saxony