Cuilcagh Mountain Lough Atona
Commodity watch by UFU peatlands officer, Stephaine Clokey
The PEACEPLUS funding was announced last week. The programme managed by the Special EU Programme Body (SEUPB), has awarded €40 million with the aim of “boosting biodiversity, nature recovery and resilience in Northern Ireland and the border counties of Ireland”.
The funding was spread between two projects focusing primarily around peatlands; €19.2 million was awarded to Ulster Wildlife for their PEAT+ project, to restore peatland across 18 sites with the aims of improving biodiversity, preserving archeologic and historic features and improving water quality. Another €20.7 million was awarded to RSPB, for their PeacePlus Nature project, to retore priority habitats and priority species across approximately 22 sites, such as delivering hen harrier and wader recovery work, peatland recovery and corncrake recovery on Rathlin Island.
Working with locals
The projects will work with local farmers and communities, and mobilise work across NI. This funding allocation further signifies the importance of peatland across a number of societal needs. Although this is great news for many peatland projects, this does little to satisfy upland farmers and those who manage peatland areas, and highlights further the gap in policy and support from government, with a lack of an upland support scheme still being the main issue in the uptake of peatland interventions. Given the added burden of reductions in basic payments, peatland management or reducing productivity further seems unappealing to many to say the least. With concerns over water quality and treatment, a Farming with Nature scheme that encourages hill farmers to manage peatland catchment areas seems like a reasonable and logical step in the right direction.
The Peatland Code could be considered by some landowners as a way to benefit from interventions and potentially mitigate against any loss of productivity. The voluntary certification standard enables land owners to generate income by marketing the restoration they’ve carried out in the form of carbon credits once restoration work has been carried out and the project has been verified and validated.
Eligibility
Of course this is not a viable option for all. The eligibility criteria is extensive and it requires considerable planning and upfront costs, with the minimum duration being 30 years to allow for the projects to demonstrate the initial works have been effective, and the land has been managed in a way that is conducive to “restoration”.
The UFU does not encourage the selling of carbon credits, the environmental market, although expanding, is still volatile and relatively new. Although some argue registration into the peatland code could offer a potential for offsetting the farm business in the future.
