Peatlands

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Greaves for initiating this debate this afternoon, for his constant championing of the peatlands in our country and because it allows me the chance to reminisce on a rather wonderful weekend I spent over the summer up in Exmoor on the blanket bogs, looking at the Exmoor Mires project, which is being run by South West Water—one of a number of pioneering projects by water companies that have come to understand the importance of peat bogs for their long-term business sustainability. Peat obviously dissolves in water, which then needs to be cleaned, so the companies are looking to restore the peatlands, with ensuing benefits not only for their business but the local community, wildlife and biodiversity more broadly.

My noble friend Lord Greaves outlined the challenges facing peatlands, so I want to pick up on only two issues in the time allotted to me. The first is to say a little more about what I believe is a strong need for a national plan for the restoration of England’s peatland. Some noble Lords may be aware that the Scottish Government have recently conducted a consultation on a national peatlands plan to protect and restore peatlands. The plan fully recognises the important contribution that restoring peatland makes to carbon capture and storage, clean water, flood alleviation—critically—improved biodiversity, tourism and outdoor recreation. If it is good enough for Scotland to have a clear plan with a set of long-term objectives for peatland restoration, I, too, ask the Minister what progress we are making in developing a national plan for the restoration of England’s peatland and when it will be published.

More fundamentally, I want to touch on the need for secure funding to ensure well-managed upland peatlands through a combination of market-related funding routes. I mentioned at the beginning how South West Water and other water companies are increasingly aware of the value to their businesses of investing to reverse the damage to peatlands. A further new model for the corporate sector to support the challenge of restoring and maintaining peatlands was championed by the Ecosystems Market Task Force back in May 2013. Since then, as my noble friend Lord Greaves mentioned, work has begun on a peatland code to help to provide the standards and verification of the carbon storage and other benefits arising from peatland restoration projects. I am delighted that Defra has been funding the pilot phase of the UK peatland code. I say to my noble friend Lord Cavendish of Furness that it is very encouraging that it is using some of that funding to develop metrics to measure some of the greenhouse gas emission reduction benefits of restoration which, as he rightly said, are at the moment still at a very early stage. We cannot proceed until we have those metrics in place, but it is welcome news that Defra is contributing that funding.

As I understand it, that project is designed to provide a credible and verifiable basis for business sponsorship of peatland restoration in the UK, operating in a similar way to the Woodland Carbon Code, assuring that restoration delivers tangible greenhouse gas emissions, alongside other environmental benefits.

Although I understand that the code is in a pilot phase at the moment, working with those businesses that are very much interested in developing their own corporate social responsibility projects, I ask what the Minister sees as the longer term potential for the plan and the code. I also ask the Minister whether the Government believe that, longer term, that peatland restoration could be included in the greenhouse gas accounting guidelines, which would be a more sustainable long term way of building in further market funding to develop peatland restoration? Growing markets in this area would not only provide funding for peatland restoration, but stimulate competitive rural businesses and provide new opportunities for knowledge providers, for technical and market-support services, which can have very important export potential. It is very much in my mind that, having recently looked at the Defra website, just how geared the department is to export potential. It is important that we do not forget that peatland restoration, and finding new markets for supporting peatland restoration, could in the long term have export potential for us and our rural businesses.

For too long, the benefits of peatland in its natural state have been frankly undervalued. Consequently, as both my noble friends carefully articulated, many are in a damaged and deteriorated state. I hope that we are now entering an era where the value of peatlands is recognised for the ecosystem services that they provide, and that those benefits for society, community and businesses are reflected more broadly in public policy, and achieve more sustained leadership by the Government on this important issue.