The economic case for rewetting England’s patchy lowland peat

Peatland provides significant value to English food production and economy, with their drainage and use leading to extensive degradation and GHG emissions. Although some agri-environmental policies support paludiculture, there remains significant uncertainty as to the private and public benefit of adopting paludiculture by landholders, especially in landscapes where lowland peats are patchy. Using a case study approach, we define the private and social benefits of six landholders in the West Midlands of England adopting paludiculture or peatland restoration for biodiversity markets to minimise or reverse further lowland peat degradation. A stochastic bioeconomic modelling approach is applied which integrates land use alternatives, payments from agri-environmental policies, and monetisation of biodiversity net gains when lowland peats are restored for habitat gain. In addition to the substantial capital costs of rewetting a catchment, land use opportunity costs, and regulatory and compliance costs affects the minimum feasible scale of rewetting lowland peat. These present significant barriers to the adoption of paludiculture, and current agri-environmental policies and payments are unlikely to be conducive to the adoption of paludiculture in small scale non-contiguous lowland peat. This puts at risk extensive areas of fragmented lowland peat and may result in continued lowland peat degradation, agriculture’s contribution to GHG emissions and catchments not benefiting from the flood mitigation and biodiversity gain opportunities rewetting lowland peat provides. Monetisation of biodiversity net gains when restoring lowland peat habitats potentially offers the most economically beneficial pathway to protecting England’s patchy lowland peats.