What are peatlands?

Peatlands are a wet type of ecosystem that forms over hundreds to ten thousands of years. Though definitions vary, most often they are described in technical terms as land with a naturally accumulated layer of peat near the surface, formed from partially decomposed plant material, storing immense amounts of carbon. Peatlands may still be actively accumulating peat, or they may be degraded and losing their peat layer.

All over this increasingly hot and dry world, these wetlands are imperiled.

Peatlands play a critical role in the regulation of the planet’s climate by capturing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in deep layers of unaltered organic matter (peat). They cover just 3% of the world’s land, but sequester twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests.

They are a crucial yet overlooked ally in our fight against Climate Change. Their conservation is intrinsically linked to the future wellbeing of humankind.

But peatlands are more than carbon stores or soil types. They are living entities – complex, more-than-human communities of water, mosses, fungi, animals, and ancestral sediments. When reduced to a single category of “land,” their plural expressions and old wisdom are obscured. In truth, peatlands are archives of millennia, repositories of climate memory, and dynamic systems that continue to surprise us with their resilience and versatility.

The Venice Agreement takes an integrative approach to defining peatlands, one that recognises their multiple dimensions: ecological, cultural, and ethical. Rather than reducing them to soil thresholds or percentages of organic carbon, we understand peatlands as companions in planetary survival – entities to be protected not only for their climate function, but also for their intrinsic worth and their role in sustaining diverse life forms.

For further details, see the background paper: Mapping Europe’s Peatlands (Tegetmeyer et al., 2025) and visit RE-PEAT for more on peatland culture and advocacy.