Biodiversity

Soils are vital to our survival. They store greenhouse gases and water and are home to at least a quarter of all living creatures on earth. However, over 60 percent of soils in the EU are damaged and their sealing threatens biodiversity.

With more than two billion tonnes of CO2, the draining of peatlands is responsible for about 4% of all human-made emissions globally. This is outlined in the Peatland Atlas 2023 - Facts and figures on wet climate guardians, published today by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, the Michael Succow Stiftung (partners in the Greifswald Mire Centre) and BUND (Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland/Friends of the Earth Germany), with support of the Global Peatlands Initiative.

Some of the world’s most important and most recently recognized peatlands can be found on the African continent. They are home to unique and rare flora and fauna – and threatened by the oil companies’ greed for money.

Peatlands all over the world sustain a rich range of habitats and species, including a wide range of threatened and endemic ones. Policymakers are called upon to protect these unique landscapes.

Peatlands exist in the mountains, in lowlands, along rivers and at the coast. Their vegetation and condition vary from one climate zone to another, but all types of peatland have one thing in common: their continued existence is in danger.

Mires are intact peatlands and home to rare plants, rare animals – and enormous amounts of carbon. But draining them for economic reasons puts them and their resident organisms at massive risk. It poses a massive threat to the climate too.