Abstract
Abstract Peatlands are essential to environmental imperatives with respect to achieving net zero and nature recovery. Sustainable Peatland Management (SPM) can help to restore, maintain and enhance peatlands to ensure they meet their potential in delivering multiple ecosystem benefits. SPM has attracted a great deal of attention in policy and practice but there has been no attempt to carry out a comprehensive review of the law and governance issues in this context. This article does so with reference to an exemplar of an area of deep peat in the southeast corner of the Brecon Beacons National Park, in Wales. Mapping the boundaries of law and governance here reveals a pressing need to amend these systems to facilitate effective SPM. It also unearths broader challenges regarding the legal frameworks for sustainable land management that will require a more fundamental response.
Highlights
Peat is perhaps best known for its use as a fuel and growing medium
This review reveals a complex web of boundaries related to law and governance for Sustainable Peatland Management (SPM) that are driven by disparate objectives that bear little relation to it’s aims
There are separate Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Regulations that apply to agriculture and forestry that will be important to SPM given the significance of these activities on peatlands and the fact that land use planning law does not apply in these contexts.[69]
Summary
Peat is perhaps best known for its use as a fuel and growing medium. Less well known is the fact that peatlands are essential to environmental imperatives in terms of both achieving net zero and nature recovery. Peatlands are wetlands with peat formed from semi-decayed plant remains as a result of anaerobic conditions caused by waterlogging. They provide numerous ecosystem benefits, for example, acting as a carbon store, contributing to flood defence and supporting biodiversity.
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