News, Resource

Launching New Guidance for Churches to Protect our Peatlands

30 October 2024

Operation Noah has released a new resource which outlines how churches and Christian landowners can protect peat, locally, at landscape scale and through their investments. Peatland is a huge carbon store globally, but when it is degraded it turns from a carbon sink to a source of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Recent research suggests that the acceleration of the climate crisis means that the natural carbon sinks we have are struggling to cope with the increased emissions and higher global temperatures. Extensive forest fires and droughts in 2023 led to more emissions coming from land than were absorbed, meaning that our remaining functioning carbon sinks are even more precious than we thought. 

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What can churches do?

Most urgently, we need to be reducing emissions in all sectors and keeping fossil fuels in the ground. Alongside this, actions to protect and extend natural carbon sinks are important steps that churches can take. We don’t know the exact amount of peatland which is owned by churches but we do know that some church denominations are major landowners. As such, they have a responsibility to manage land sustainably as part of their efforts to restore God’s creation and address the climate crisis.

The Church of England is in the top 10 English land owners, while the Jesuits’ UK land is worth approximately £99m, and the Kirk’s land in Scotland is worth an estimated £516m. Furthermore, we hope this resource will benefit many Christian landowners up and down the country as they seek to steward their patch of God’s creation. 

Protecting peat is one of three main recommendations from our Church Land and the Climate Crisis report, and our new resource includes several case studies – from the story of a local education project raising awareness about the importance of peat to a retreat centre which is assessing how best to manage a significant area of blanket bog and pockets of peat on their land.

Healthy peatland is a hugely important carbon sink as well as a valuable habitat for many rare species including birds, butterflies, mosses and lichens. It also helps with flood resilience, controlling pollution and supporting water cycles. At Operation Noah, we want all parts of the Church to be more aware of the importance of peatland and the actions we can take to protect peat via our purchases, joining national campaigns and asking major landholders to do more.

Our new four-page resource is available to download as a standard PDF  or to print on A3 paper. In the months to come, we’ll also be releasing a new resource on ways to support farmers to reduce their agricultural emissions. We’re also continuing to promote our recent resource on Growing Trees and the opportunity to plant a tree to celebrate our 20th anniversary.

Protecting peat is another example of a climate solution with many benefits, but it can also be a positive investment. Perhaps your regional or national church body could invest in peatland restoration as part of a pledge to invest in climate solutions (check out our Green Investment Declaration here). 

We would like to invite you to download and share our new Protecting Peat resource – with additional resources here  – and to find out how you can contribute to protecting this vital habitat and carbon store. 

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