Herbert Diemont 1, Willem Ferwerda 2, Hans Joosten 3, Tatiana Minaeva 3, Jack Rieley 4, Henk Ritzema 5, Marcel Silvius 6
1: Alterra (WUR), 2: IUCN-NL, 3: IMCG, 4: IPS, 5: ICID, 6: Wetlands International
° paper presented at the XII International Peat Congress: Wise Use of Peatlands in Tampere, Finland
The Global Peatland Initiative (GPI) started in 2001 and comprises representatives of the peat industry (IPS), non governmental organizations (IUCN-NL, IMCG, ICID, Wetlands International), and science (Alterra). So far the initiative has generated over 50 projects for peatlands in Africa, South America, Asia, and Europe. The GPI has become involved in the Coordinating Committee for Global Action on Peatlands of the Ramsar Convention and is also linked to the CBD. The partnership is engaged in the debate on climate change and the importance of peatlands within the UNFCCC. The GPI has supported the establishment of regional networks for wise use of peatlands in South America, southern Africa and South-east Asia. The GPI, through its projects, has also contributed to national peatlands strategies of countries such as South Africa, Indonesia, and Russia. There is scope to increase the added value of the partnership for the peat-based industry.
The International Peat Society (IPS) and the International Mire Conservation Group (IMCG) agreed in Surwold (Germany) in 1997 to prepare jointly a document on the "Wise Use of Mires and Peatlands" (Joosten & Clarke 2002). This initiative paved the way for the Global Peatland Initiative (GPI), which was formed in response to the Ramsar Guidelines for Global Action on Peatlands (GGAP) to "foster national, regional and international partnerships of government, private sector and non-government agencies to fund and implement actions in support of such strategies". Funding was obtained from The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS). The GPI steering committee includes representatives of IMCG, IPS, the IUCN-Netherlands Committee, Wetlands International (WI), and Alterra (Wageningen-UR). The International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) joined the GPI steering committee in 2003. In this paper we give an overview over the period 2001-2003 of the results of a successful partnership, that has triggered links with international conventions and generated so far 50 projects worldwide. GPI is also involved with and contributes to the Ramsar Coordinating Committee for Global Action on Peatlands (CC-GAP). Options to enforce the partnership are discussed in this paper.
For a full account on the GPI, its aims, projects, results, and finance we refer to the GPI web site: www.globalpeatlands.net
One of the reasons for the establishment of the GPI partnership, involving industry, NGOs and science agencies, is the assumption that it could more effectively reach out to and influence international policy processes that are relevant to the wise use of peatlands, including the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar 1971), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). One of the first GPI projects (in GPI phase 1) facilitated the wise use agreement of IMCG and IPS in Wageningen 2001. The resulting IPS-IMCG Joint Statement on Wise Use of Peatlands is a benchmark for integrated management of global peatlands and has been used as a key communication tool towards policy makers during phase 2 of the GPI. The Statement has now been published in 5 languages and is available on the web sites of IPS and IMCG and other GPI partners. With regard to the CBD, IUCN-NC organized in April 2002 a GPI side event during the CBD COP6 in The Hague. During the triennial Wetlands International Board of Members meeting of Wetlands International in November 2001 (involving representatives of 58 countries as well as major international conservation NGOs and specialist groups), the deputy Secretary General of the Ramsar Convention provided a keynote on the important role the GPI could play in implementing the Guidelines on Global Action on Peatlands. A GPI side event was organized at the COP8 of the Ramsar Convention in Valencia in November 2002, during which the IPS-IMCG publication on Wise Use of Mires and Peatlands was launched. The Conference of the Parties adopted the draft Resolution COP8 DR11 on Designation of Under-represented Wetland Types, which included reference to the role of the GPI. As a result of stakeholder meetings in Central Kalimantan in relation to the Ex-Mega Rice Project which affected over 1.5 million ha of tropical peat swamp forests and caused significant environmental problems as well as increased poverty, the GPI financed the development of the "Biorights" financial system, which provides a basis for addressing poverty-environment issues. During the UNEP-Finance Roundtable in Tokyo in October 2003 in a workshop on Biodiversity and Finance, the innovative Biorights approach was presented by the authorities of Central Kalimantan and representatives of the local Dayak communities. At the CBD COP 7 in Kuala Lumpur in February 2004 a side event on the importance of peatlands for carbon storage was organized through a project on climate change and biodiversity managed by the Global Environmental Centre, which had been initiated and supported by the GPI. This resulted in a CBD Decision on biodiversity and climate change, specifically referring also to the role of peatlands as carbon stores and sinks. In addition, the GPI has supported the establishment of the Ramsar Coordinating Committee on Global Action on Peatlands, by financing the organisation of its first workshop in Wageningen (Oct 2003). In summary, the GPI has had a major influence on the relevant conventions and has helped to place peatlands firmly on the agenda of international policy makers
The GPI partnership has effectively supported the development of regional and local networks, by enforcing the efforts of its participating organizations. Through the involvement of IMCG in South Africa, GPI funded projects have led to regional networks of peatland experts in southern Africa (including experts from South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia). The IUCN Netherlands Committee was able to facilitate through GPI funding a regional network (Grupo Páramos) for promoting the wise use and conservation of the Páramos high mountain peatlands in the Andes, involving eight Andean countries. A network was also initiated for peatlands in Patagonia by Wetlands International, involving experts from Argentina and Chile. In South-East Asia the Asian Peatland Initiative was launched by the Global Environment Centre, with co-financing of the GPI. The first (GPI) peatland project in Mongolia was enabled through international cooperation involving Russian scientists. Through initiatives of IPS members in the Baltics and in the Netherlands (facilitated by GPI phase 1 funding) the possibilities to promote wise use through certification of peat products was discussed with the peat extracting industry. These discussions are still continuing. Various GPI projects have had their impact at the national policy level, enabled through existing networks from IMCG and Wetlands International. The GPI thus has contributed significantly to capacity building at the national, regional and global levels, strengthening its individual partners and local collaborating agencies, but particularly enabling enhanced results through cooperation.
Peatland inventory has received a significant amount of attention under the GPI. It is seen as a first and essential step towards sustainable management. Without a sound knowledge base on the location, values, functions and threats to peatlands it will be very hard to promote their conservation and wise use. Within phase 2 of the GPI, the University of Greifswald provided a global database for peatlands, following the global peatland maps previously (GPI phase 1) produced with ISRIC (Wageningen-UR). For the first time regional distribution maps of peatlands were published for the high Andes and Patagonia in South America and peatlands in southern Africa and Mongolia. The Andes is particularly well endowed with highland peatlands, but these "water towers of the high mountains" also occur on other continents. The South American partners also included in their overview of high mountain peatlands data on such systems in east Africa and New Guinea. In addition, the inventory of peatlands was a focus of several nationally based GPI projects in Mongolia, Georgia, Armenia and Malaysia, enhancing the national science basis required for sustainable management. In Russia the GPI project lead to adoption of the Russion Peatlands Action Plan on Federal level
In phase 2 of the GPI the linkage between poverty and peatlands was explored, particularly as a follow-up to previous work in phase 1 that enabled identification and involvement of stakeholders in project planning processes. The occurrence of peatlands in developing countries often coincides with rural poverty, as a consequence of peatlands often being some of the last remaining wilderness and natural resource areas. In many instances they occur at the fringes of development. They provide a buffer for the local communities located far from markets and trapped in systems of poverty and often largely dependent on the productivity of natural ecosystems or the potential offered by conversion of these systems to subsistence agriculture. Under phase 1 of the GPI already some projects worked closely with local communities to explore options for sustainable management and restoration (e.g. Thailand - GPI14, Indonesia - GPI10, China - GPI8). The projects in Indonesia and China received a follow-up in the second phase (China - GPI68, Indonesia - GPI62). The project in Thailand received a further grant from the NC-IUCN Small Wetlands Grants. In GPI Phase 2 several new poverty reduction oriented initiatives were supported; some were developed on the basis of peatland inventories that were done or started in phase 1. An example is the Maputaland project (GPI56) following the initial peatland inventory in southern Africa by the IMPESA network, which focused on one of the poorest regions in South Africa where poverty clearly was a vector in the destruction of the peatswamp forests resource. Another example is incorporated as a component in the Paramos project (GPI71), which included six case studies in critical peatland areas (high biodiversity and poverty indexes) in different countries to enhance the understanding of the relation between high Andean peatlands and rural livelihoods. Other GPI Projects in Indonesia (Kalimantan and Sumatra) focused on community-based peat fire prevention, including capacity building and awareness raising, as well as the extinguishing of fires in critical areas. The peat fires in South-east Asia have a huge impact on the local economy, as a result of resource destruction (e.g. forestry, agriculture, biodiversity), as well as impact on transport. Moreover, these fires and the resulting smog affect the health of hundred thousands of people both in the rural communities as well as cities, with many people being hospitalised or treated as out-patients. Whereas already many projects exist to monitor the occurrence and impacts of these fires, the GPI projects were some of the first to actually set examples on how this major problem can be addressed through bottom-up approaches involving local communities and other stakeholders.
The Global Peatland Initiative has proven to be useful as a public-private partnership. Such partnerships should not be regarded as a magical tool to achieve sustainable development or "wise use" of natural resources such as peatlands. Their value is mainly in providing a platform for a variety of development and conservation sectors and stakeholders to work together constructively towards a better understanding of each other's interests and towards agreements on issues that require inter-sectoral cooperation. In this respect it is important that sustainability or "wise use" is not only an opportunity, but may involve opportunity costs for some of the stakeholders on local and regional levels. For instance, in poverty trapped regions it should be acknowledged that without attempts to solve the economic and social problems one can not expect much attention to environmental problems (see Verhagen et al, this symposium), while at the same time poverty issues may augment poverty. To solve such discrepancies it can be useful to clearly identify and assess the opportunity costs through such partnerships, enhancing credibility of the fundraising approaches to donor agencies.
The paradigm of "wise use" or sustainable development provides the partnership with a tool requiring the industry to internalize environmental and related social issues within their operations, whereas environmental non-governmental organizations are required to internalize economic and related social issues in their environmental objectives. In this respect the partnership could be directed more towards the peat based industry. So far too little emphasis has been given to the initiatives and contributions of the industry with respect to achieving wise use. A case in point are the investments made in rehabilitation of exploited peatlands and the efforts made for instance by the Canadian peat industry to support the science community. Also the options for co-operation with the oil and gas industry need more attention. The GPI could also contribute to the debate of peat as a renewable or non-renewable source of energy. Another most important challenge of the partnership is to contribute to the de-coupling of poverty and degradation of peat resources in the world. To really address environment-poverty issues, generally longer-term programmes are necessary. It is a pity that for bureaucratic reasons the GPI was able to only finance short-term activities. In this light, the achievements of the partnership have been significant, but to achieve sustainable results some of the initiatives started by the GPI will require longer-term follow up funding. In operating along these lines we believe that in the end the GPI partnership can provide added value towards achieving the ultimate goal of its partners: the wise use of peatlands. So far, the GPI partnership has proven its value, and it is clear that without the joint expertise of its partners and their networks it will be much more difficult to positively influence the policy frameworks of the different conventions and governments.
Joosten, H. & Clarke, D. (2002) Wise use of mires and peatlands. International Mire Conservation Group and International Peat Society, 253 pp. (With financial support from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS) under the Global Peatland Initiative)
last update: 2004/05/04