The interdisciplinary PEATSENSE project is funded by the European Research Council. The project investigates the transformation of peatlands in Latin America and Europe as new global institutions and actors arrive as part of transnational climate mitigation action. PEATSENSE aims to document the implications of these transformations as well as identifying pathways towards just and inclusive governance.
The premise of PEATSENSE is that the arrival of these new imaginaries, technologies and actors stands to further exclude the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LC) and associated forms of Indigenous and Local forms of Environmental Knowledge – but that this is not inevitable. The wider project sets out to analyse the diverse forms of knowledge within and around peatlands across a set of eight case studies, analysing how certain forms of knowledge become established as ‘expertise’ and others are marginalised or sidelined.
We will trace different sensing technologies, financial programmes and governance frameworks brought into play by new climate mitigation frameworks, and the impact on other forms of governance, for example in relation to biodiversity conservation and wetlands management. This will help us evaluate the potential social, cultural and ecological impact of different options on the table for measuring and mitigating carbon loss. Working with local communities, we will implement a participatory decision-making process in and beyond the case study areas to inform future policymaking.
Context
The project is contextualised by an important ecological challenge: we now know that although peatlands cover only 3-4% of the earth’s surface, they hold 33% of its carbon reserves and, that when damaged, they are a major contributor to carbon emissions. Following paradigm-shifting findings in biophysical research on the role of peatlands in the global carbon cycle, a suite of policy proposals and governance initiatives have presented options for integrating new indicators into climate change mitigations. Meanwhile, monitoring technologies including LiDAR and drones promise methods to quantify peatland attributes such as carbon, as a basis for assessing measures’ success and determining equivalent payments in monetary terms. However, many of the proposed interventions have been shaped without studying why and how ecological degradation occurs in the first place or how proposals will affect those living in and near peatlands. Already-existing practices of living sustainably with peatlands that persist among IP&LC are rarely considered legitimate forms of climate expertise within the mitigations design process: indeed, plans to expand carbon accounting for priority sites tend to frame knowledge about peatland conservation as new, while peatlands are frequently framed as empty spaces, where labour does not happen.
In Latin America these transformations are very new: global efforts to map peatlands and their carbon storage potential via satellite and remote sensing data have suggested that there is a significantly higher extent of peatland than was expected, especially in the high Andean mountains and low Amazon basin. These peatlands [turberas] were not, in most of Latin America, classified as such historically; they have instead been known and governed by their definition as humedales [wetlands], páramos [high moorlands], bofedales [high, peat-rich wetlands], pantanos or aguajales [swampy or fen-like wetlands], cienagas [marshy swamps], or marismas [salt marshes]. The premise of PEATSENSE is that the arrival of new carbon imaginaries, technologies and actors in a context of ontological ambiguity and diversity may enable further rounds of dispossession of IP&LC and their knowledges.
The hypothesis this ERC project rests upon is that valuing diverse knowledge about peatlands in mitigation processes is better for people living near peatlands – but also, better for peatland ecologies. The hypothesis will be tested through a qualitative social science approach that analyses the sensing practices and multispecies relationships play in peatlands in a set of case studies recently identified for large-scale climate mitigation interventions. A participatory process implemented alongside data collection will directly inform decision-making in and beyond the case study areas, informing future policymaking.
Principle Investigator: Dr Naomi Millner, Associate Professor in Human Geography
Funder: ERC Consolidator Grant
Timeline: 2025-2028
Project website available soon.
