A new partnership led by the Broads Authority has been awarded a new grant to design peatland restoration projects in the Broads National Park to build carbon storage and help adapt to climate change.
While the Broads National Park stores vast amounts of carbon, safely locked up in its wet fen and reedbeds, nearly a quarter of its deep peat soils are drained for agriculture, which releases greenhouse gases. In fact, around one million tonnes of carbon have been lost from the Broads in the past 40 years.
This funding recognises that the Broads is an internationally significant store of carbon, equivalent to 7% of the carbon stored in forest trees across the whole UK.
The new Nature for Climate Peatland Grant Scheme (NCPGS) Discovery Grant of £800,000 runs until 2023, and will allow the partnership to develop a pioneering approach to peatland management and carbon storage in the Broads landscape.
The cross-sector partnership of charities, farmers, land managers and Palladium (a global impact firm) will work together across 13 sites in the Broads to find ways to stop this loss of carbon, and restore wetland so that it captures more carbon. The first phase of the project will work on feasibility studies and a new business case for private-finance investment for carbon and water storage.
Carbon-rich peatland ecosystems such as those in the Broads provide multiple benefits to the environment, including a net cooling effect on climate, reduction of flood risk, and supporting biodiversity. Healthy peatlands can reduce flood risk by slowing the flow of water from the uplands, and by providing floodplain storage in the lowlands.
The partnership aims to overcome complex barriers to peatland restoration that exist in the Broads and to change attitudes to peat restoration by demonstrating practical solutions for new peatland economics.
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Posted On: 21/12/2021