Diverse Knowledges and Sensing Practices in Peatlands for Inclusive Climate Futures

PEATSENSE will devise and test a ground-breaking approach to decision-making in peatland sites designated priority areas in recent climate assessments, redefining the meaning and practices of inclusion for future global climate mitigation. 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. Following paradigm-shifting findings in biophysical research on the role of peatlands in the global carbon cycle, a suite of policy pathways and governance initiatives have been proposed to incentivise and monitor peatland conservation. However, many of the proposed interventions have been shaped without a clear understanding of why and how ecological degradation occurs in the first place, or how interventions will affect those living in and near peatlands. By imagining peatlands as places without people, or as inaccessible sites people do not depend upon, policymakers frame the problem of peatland conservation as a technical one. Yet the question of how to conserve peatlands is political because it is a matter of ‘who gets to decide’ how environments are managed, and in whose interests. Multinational corporations and banking institutions are major players in the investment packages on the table, and private investors stand to gain considerably from new governmental subsidies. Meanwhile, even ‘nature-based’ restoration practices such as rewetting impact on local agricultural and cultural practices in important ways. PEATSENSE will provide the missing investigation into the politics of knowledge surrounding peatland conservation to combat social exclusion and diversify decision-making processes. By analysing configurations of climate expertise in relation to proposed interventions, this project will model processes for valuing Local and Indigenous knowledge in climate futures and redefine inclusion for future mitigation strategies.