Is peatland restoration a cost-effective measure for climate protection? An ecologically extended cost-benefit-analysis

Authors:
Jan Philipp Schägner and Lena Schaller

Book:
After Wise Use – The Future of Peatlands, Proceedings of the 13th International Peat Congress: Peatland After-Use

Keywords:
climate-protection, co2-abatement-costs, cost-benefit-analysis, monetary-valuation, peatland

Documentfile:
Schägner et al. 2008: Is peatland restoration a cost-effective measure

Summary:

Alternative uses or restoration of drained peatland can diminish their greenhouse gas emissions substantially. In our project, we estimate if such measures are cost-effective strategies for global climate protection. There- fore we conduct an ecologically extended cost-benefit-analysis on alternative peatland managements, taking into account the economic impacts on the farming sector, benefits of other uses that must be foregone (e.g. streets and housing), implementation costs of technical measures, and ecological impacts such as GHG emis- sions, nutrient eluviation, biodiversity and landscape aesthetics. To make this multidimensional set of impacts comparable to alternative scenarios by putting them on the same basis, we valuate each single impact mone- tarily as far as possible.