📋 Tender Overview
Start Date: 01/07/2022
End Date: 30/06/2027
Total Eligible Budget: 4,425,740 €
EU Contribution: 2,655,444 €
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Due to drainage and over-exploitation, peatlands are among the most threatened ecosystems in Europe. Agriculture, horticulture, and thermal insulation of buildings are the main uses of the extracted peat. Peatland ecosystems are immensely important for climate change mitigation, as they store large quantities of carbon (carbon sinks). Climate change and peatland drainage results in peat oxidation and carbon release, and also increased risk of forest fires; therefore, to reduce negative impacts on peatlands, restoration of the hydrological regime is required. On a global scale, degraded peatlands cover more than 0.5 million km2 and represent about 30% of CO2 emissions caused by land use and land use change. The emission rates depend on peat temperature, groundwater level, and moisture content in the peat. In the EU, peatlands cover only 2% of the total area of cultivated land, but are responsible for more than 50% of the CO2 emissions from the sector. To date, studies on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from peatlands are not sufficiently represented in national GHG inventories, and the UNFCCC have suggested further methodological work on wetlands, focusing on the rewetting and restoration of peatland, with a view to filling in the gaps in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories .
