Why we should all be obsessed with Peatlands.
Transcriber: Zeddi Lee
Reviewer: Amanda Zhu
Hi, I’m Ireen,
and I’m obsessed with peatlands.
Thought I might just get
straight to the point.
I’m obsessed with
their colours, their smells,
their carbon capture abilities,
how they can literally
and metaphorically suck you in
and how they are, in many ways,
a true in-between.
I’m obsessed with
everything about them.
And yes, obsessed
is pretty strong wording,
but I think it’s the only
appropriate word here
to describe my relationship to them.
In fact, I think we should all be
obsessed with peatlands.
And I’ll tell you why.
I dedicate a pretty significant
chunk of my time
pushing for peatland protection
and appreciation.
And I found that this is
especially important
because many people don’t even know
what peatlands are.
Who here does?
What about bogs?
Fens?
Mires?
Swamps?
Yeah, bet the last one rings a bell.
Do you know a mere two years ago,
if someone had asked me about peatlands,
I probably wouldn’t have had a clue,
or maybe I would have pictured the swamp
from the Shrek movies,
a dirty, brown, somewhat gloomy
and pretty unattractive space.
So how did I get
from an absolute peat nobody
to full-on peat fanatic,
who would love to live in Shrek’s swamp,
has literally organised
an entire peat festival
and will probably drop peatland,
such as the one pictured behind me,
into pretty much
any conversation that I have.
Well, towards the end of 2019,
two of my friends, Bethany and Frankie,
went to an action camp in Germany
called ‘Free the soil’.
I had gotten to know them both
from university,
and we had been doing
a various climate projects together.
We went to protests, organised gatherings,
got involved with actions.
And I think it would be fair to say
that we gradually got pretty neck-deep
into the climate movement.
Now, at this action camp,
Bethany and Frankie
went on a peatland excursion.
And as they waded
into the soggy soils of the bog,
a peat scientist named Jan Peters -
yeah, that’s really his name -
shared some mind-boggling facts
about the power of peat.
Peat is formed
as dead plant material
becomes submerged by water.
Through decomposing in still water,
the water becomes depleted of oxygen,
and what remains is an anoxic mix of water
and partially decomposed matter
in a sort of pickled state.
This matter is called peat.
And since decomposition stops
as oxygen runs out,
peat accumulates a huge amount of carbon.
Peat forms layer upon layer,
sometimes over the span
of more than 10,000 years.
To illustrate the scope of this,
peatlands, though only covering
three percent of the world’s land surface,
store 30 percent
of all terrestrial carbon.
All forests in the entire world combined
can’t even level that.
And some people estimate that there is
more carbon locked in peat moss
than any other plant on Earth.
But carbon trapping
isn’t even their only superpower.
Peatlands host a range
of unique plant and animal species
which like to have their feet wet,
such as cattails, curlew birds,
the funky carnivoric Sanju plants
and specialized peat mosses.
Peatlands are a water sponge,
preventing both floods and droughts
but also acting as a natural
water filtering system.
Peatlands offer a quiet
and sheltered breeding space
for many migratory birds.
And to go even further,
on a philosophical level,
peatlands are enchanting,
acting as a threshold space
and in-between.
They are as much a process
defined by the formation of peat
as a concrete thing.
They’re not quite water, not quite land,
not quite dead, not quite alive,
not quite then and not quite now.
Their distinct character
has played an important literary, artistic
and cultural role throughout history.
So really, peatlands have it all.
However, peatlands
don’t have it easy right now.
Peatlands are being drained
and destroyed on a large scale.
For example, in Germany,
peatlands are being drained
to let cows graze on them.
In the Baltic states, peat is being dug up
for the export of potting soil.
And in Indonesia,
peatlands are being destroyed
to make space for palm oil farms.
Now, you might be thinking,
All right, thanks for the story.
But why should I care?
Well, since peatlands
store so much carbon,
the effects of peatlands
on the climate are enormous.
Peatland destruction is responsible
for five percent of the annual
human-induced CO2 emissions.
That is more than the entire aviation
and shopping industry together.
Peatlands are such a potent
carbon sink when intact
and such a potent
carbon source when degraded.
Bethany called me up after the action camp
to share what happened.
And as you can maybe imagine,
I was shocked.
How is it possible
that we as young people
who had essentially committed our lives
to the climate movement
had never been told about this?
A strong sense of duty
dawned on all of us.
We have to do something about the peat.
And then on the bus ride back
from the action camp,
while people were still talking
about the excursion,
a friend jokingly
pitched the name ‘RE-PEAT’.
Of course, he can’t waste
such a great name.
So at that point,
there was no going back.
RE-PEAT was born.
And as a newly found peatland collective,
we started cracking our brains
on this paradox.
How is it possible
that an ecosystem so beautiful,
equipped with so many vital features
is written off so easily?
And we came up with
the following explanation.
Peatlands are often
categorised as wastelands,
useless, putrid spaces
full of annoying midgets
and not much else.
And once you’ve identified something
as useless, as worthless,
you have essentially gotten yourself
a license for unapologetic destruction.
This is the same excuse
that has been used multiple times before
to erase entire ecosystems
and communities.
On top of that, through a capitalist lens,
a drained bog equals money,
and a wet bog equals no money,
so one plus one is two,
and you got yourself a broken bog.
Now, I do want to stress
that this is merely a rule of thumb,
not a universal truth.
The stories of peatlands are layered.
Yes, the capitalist logic is a big driver
behind peatland destruction,
but greed is not always
the underlying reason.
For example, in the Netherlands,
drainage used to happen
rather to simply have
more land surface area.
And in Ireland, peat burning
provided fuel sovereignty
from the colonising Brits.
Peatlands are mushy places,
but the conclusion here
is a solid paradox.
If we wish to re-peat the peat,
we have to dig deep
and radically change peat perception.
So the question that we started
asking ourselves was,
How do we change this peat logic around?
How do we dismantle and debunk
the myth of the wasteland
and build a new meaning
which actually represents
all the superpowers of the peat?
In essence, how do we shift
to peatland paradigm?
My idea?
We will have to reimagine the peatland.
Reimagining peatlands
means valuing peatlands
not for the monetary profit
that they may generate
but for simply existing
in all their fullness and generosity.
I believe that reimagining
is a crucial step
towards changing our current
climate-catastrophe-inducing system.
Reimagining is a process
of unlearning adulthood,
of becoming unproductive
and playful once again.
For instance, as a kid,
when you see a tree,
you see a hiding spot, a playground,
a home for birds, a building material.
But as an adult, you just see a tree.
Adulting has started to mean
getting sucked into
the productivity machine,
being told to always seek efficiency
and being sold the idea
of purchasable happiness.
Yet if we truly want to change our system,
we will have to open our minds
to alternatives
and radically change peat perception.
With reimagining, we take the time
to just stand still for a second
and observe.
Look closely at
the little things around you
that maybe you stop paying attention to.
Use your senses of sound, taste and smell.
Use your hands to explore the textures.
Start to reimagine your surroundings,
your daily reality.
Now, I know that this all
sounds very abstract,
so I want to invite you
into a small reimagining exercise.
I’m going to play a short sound fragment,
and I want you to close your eyes
and listen carefully to it.
Maybe you just want to count the amount
of different animals that you hear.
Maybe you can visualise the smells
that these sounds come from.
Or maybe you can completely
travel into the peatland
and feel your feet soaking into the mud.
(Peatland sounds: birds chirping,
frogs croaking, grass rustling)
Now, did that sound
like a wasteland to you?
At RE-PEAT,
alongside being obsessed with peatlands,
we use peatlands
as a microcosm of the world,
a tool for understanding reality.
Because this talk is not only about
reimagining peatlands as entities.
It’s about relearning how we can integrate
our existence with them
in a regenerative way.
It’s about going
beyond the ecosystem services
and the business cases
and really start thinking
of more symbiotic alternatives,
where both the ecological
and the human needs are met.
And this won’t mean
putting a fence around the land
and letting it heal,
because drained peatlands actually
require human rewetting activity.
There’s already many different practices
which can be practiced indefinitely
on healthy peatlands,
which have been deployed historically
by local and indigenous communities.
It’s important to honour
and pay close attention to this knowledge
as we reimagine these landscapes.
The same time, there is a lot
of experiments currently happening
with regards to sustainable agriculture
on wet peatlands;
for example,
the farming of cattails
as an isolation material
or sustainable peat moss farming
to replace the peat in compost.
Reimagining is not about getting
into a pressure cooker
and inventing a highly futuristic solution
to all of our problems.
Rather, it’s a shift in mindset
that you can practice in your daily life
and incorporate into anything that you do.
Think back to the soundscape
that we listened to earlier.
What did you notice?
Maybe you noticed the birds,
or your neighbour paid attention
to the rustling of the grasses
or the falling of the rain.
When I’m finished, why don’t you ask them?
Bringing all these perspectives together
produces a much richer image of a peatland
than anyone could have
imagined by themselves.
In other words, none of us will be able
to shift the peatland paradigm alone.
It requires a long process
of broad engagement
and continuous collaboration
because reimagining
is a never-ending practice.
Every exercise of reimagining
is a step in expanding your toolbox
of reimaginative skills.
We started today with the peatlands,
one of the most overlooked
yet superpowered ecosystems
as well as a fascinating microcosm
for understanding the world at large.
As a next step,
can you try to reimagine forests,
mountains, rivers,
reimagine conservation as a whole,
reimagine a future beyond the exploitation
of the natural world?
Go as big or as small as you wish.
It is evident
that the peatland paradigm has to shift.
The climate crisis is one of the most
pressing issues of our time.
And if we wish to do something about that,
we have to take care of our peatlands.
The real challenge in front of us
is envisioning an alternative
to the ever destructive
‘business as usual’,
to visualise a future
which we do want to live in.
And radical, playful reimagining
will be fundamental to this process.
So join me on this creative,
reimaginative journey.
And next time you see a peatland,
take the time to absorb it.
Notice the colours,
the sounds, the smells.
Imagine the sponge-like features,
the water filtering systems
and the funky plants.
And maybe you, too,
will feel the superpowers of the peat
and become a little bit
obsessed with them.
(Applause) (Cheers)