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So far, in Bartenikha and elsewhere, Belarus has revived over 28,000 hectares of peatlands, about five percent of the national total. It has cut carbon dioxide emissions by 300,000 tons per year, since healthy peatlands are carbon “sinks” that absorb large quantities of emissions that would otherwise worsen climate change. The initiative has been so successful that it has been adopted in Ukraine and shared as a model for wildlife protection at the 2010 Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Russia has requested assistance with a similar effort.
Ecological and economic tolls There was a time when the Bartenikha mire and others flourished undisturbed. Belarus has twice the global average for the territorial coverage of peat mires, a precious national and regional resource given the mires’ carbon-absorbing properties. But beginning in the 1950s, drainage canals began slashing through once pristine mires. For Belarus, peat was a relatively cheap and readily available source of fuel and energy. By the mid-1970s, it was extracting nearly 40 millions tons per year. Large-scale drainage projects facilitated extraction and transformed the mires into land suitable for agriculture or forestry. Little attention was paid to a more ecologically sound alternative: rewetting and restoring the mires after extraction. By the 1990s, the number of peatlands had been cut in half. The dieback in plant and animal life included some globally endangered species such as the greater spotted eagle and grey heron. Instead of absorbing carbon dioxide, the mires began emitting it as fires raged over the dried-up land. Aerosols and toxic gases spewed into the air through smoke, sickening nearby people and animals. The Government was forced to spend millions of dollars combating the fires. Local economies suffered as hunting and fishing dwindled, and communities could no longer rely on the mires as a source of berries and herbs to consume and sell for extra income. Prospects for exploring new economic opportunities were nonexistent. Early steps to stem these ecological and economic tolls began in 1999, as UNDP joined forces with the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Darwin Initiative for the Survival of Species, the national NGO APB-Birdlife Belarus and the National Academy of Sciences. They focused on developing new national capacities to evaluate and better manage natural wetlands resources. In three peat mires, an experiment began. Optimal water levels for biodiversity conservation and human economic activity were calculated, achieved through the installation of infrastructure such as dikes and sluices to regulate water flow, and then maintained
Peat fire at the depleted peatland Osinovskoye-1 in the Vitebsk region. Photo by Alexander Kozulin