Cafe Economique: (online ticket) restoring the world's largest carbon store

This is a ticket for joining online (via Zoom). For in-person tickets, please click here.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cafe-economique-in-person-restoring-the-worlds-largest-carbon-store-tickets-321208712907?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

Peatlands cover over 400 million hectares of the Earth’s surface, i.e. over 3%. They store a third of the world’s soil carbon, which makes them the largest and the most space-effective carbon store of all terrestrial ecosystems. Climate change and land use and management, primarily agriculture and forestry following land drainage, is modifying the structure and function of these systems, potentially changing the global peatland greenhouse gas balance to a carbon source. This threatens stocks of natural capital that have formed over millennia, undermining the adaptive capacity of peatland systems to climatic and other future changes. Peatland degradation also compromises the delivery of other benefits provided by peatlands, such as erosion control, water quality and biodiversity. These issues have increasingly become a focus with policy makers nationally and internationally for addressing the climate emergency. For example, peatlands have featured prominently in the latest UN Climate Change Conference, COP26 held in Glasgow at the end of last year, where claims for scaling up peatland restoration efforts were emphasized.

To understand whether investments in the restoration of degraded peatlands are socially desirable from an economic efficiency perspective, the costs and benefits of restoration need to be understood. This implies an economic valuation of goods and services that are, at present, not traded in (well-functioning) markets. This ‘café economique’ will present a pioneer study on the economic assessment of peatland restoration including the valuation of carbon sequestration, water quality and habitat support at the national level in Scotland. The work shows how investing in peatland restoration generates net benefits to society and also how doing it so sooner rather than later, avoids opportunity costs of over hundred millions of £ annually. This economic case has informed decision on the UK government's Climate Change plans to invest in the restoration of 35,000 hectares of peatlands in England by 2025 as part of its net zero land use policies, and has serve to provide evidence at the House of Lords. This kind of analysis can also provide the basis reward or market-based instruments by which public or private agents compensate those who take action to protect ecosystems.

Café Economique is a voluntary organisation whose aim is to provide education for interested members of the public about current economic topics and possible actions so that our economic system works and benefits all in an equitable, democratic and transparent way. The Café runs monthly talks. Please check out the website. https://www.cafeeconomiqueleeds.org/

Julia Martin-Ortega, Professor of Ecological Economics, has fifteen years of research experience in the understanding of the relationships of society and individuals with ecosystems and how policy can best make use of this understanding for the sustainable management of water and land resources. She specializes in inter and transdisciplinary research approaches of impact-oriented nature, and has expertise in the application of multiple environmental monetary and non-monetary valuation methods. Julia’s work has resulted in societal impact such as the amendment of the Scotland Water Resources Act (2013) and the influence and support of the UK’s Department of Environment, Food, Rural Affairs’ Nature for Climate Fund and the Scottish Peatland Action Programme, as well as Northern Ireland’s Soil Nutrient Health Scheme, each representing muti-million public investments in ecosystem restoration/land use programmes. She is currently Associate Director of water@leeds, member of the Social Sciences Expert Panel of Natural England, the Steering Committee of the Scottish Government’s Centre for Expertise in Waters and of the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council College.

Professor Joseph Holden is a Cambridge graduate and holds a PhD from Durham University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. He has held the Chair of Physical Geography at the University of Leeds for the last 15 years during which time he has been the Research Dean for the Faculty of Environment and he is also Director of water@leeds, one of the largest interdisciplinary university-based water research centres in the world. He has expertise in the hydrology and carbon dynamics of peatlands, catchment hydrology and land management impacts on flooding, soil processes and flowpaths. He runs the Yorkshire Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme (iCASP) which seeks to apply environmental science to maximise resilient economic growth and social benefit in Yorkshire. He sits on Defra’s Water Expert Advisory Group, the scientific advisory board for MS Amlin, a major re-insurance company, chairs the Viking windfarm environmental advisory group on Shetland, and sits on Natural England’s peatland strategy group. He has published > 180 research papers and is lead author/editor of three university textbooks.

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