Peatlands cover 3% of land but hold twice the carbon of all forests
The planet's most efficient carbon vault is a waterlogged bog you've probably never visited.
Peatlands form where waterlogged ground starves dead plants of oxygen, so they never fully rot. Instead, partly decayed vegetation piles up over thousands of years as peat, locking away the carbon those plants pulled from the air.
The result is staggering. According to the IUCN, peatlands cover just 3% of the world’s land surface, yet they store more than 600 gigatonnes of carbon — up to 44% of all soil carbon, and more than all the world’s forests combined.
That makes intact peatlands a powerful climate ally, but a dangerous one if disturbed. When peatlands are drained for farming or fuel, the exposed peat decays and releases its stored carbon. Drained peatlands emit roughly 1.9 gigatonnes of CO₂ a year — close to 5% of all human-caused greenhouse emissions — from a sliver of degraded land. Keeping bogs wet keeps that carbon underground.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
