Starting in Glasgow, the site of the COP26 climate summit, and continuing 7,767km all the way to Sharm-el-Sheik in Egypt, the site of COP27, the Running out of Time relay aims to highlight the desperate plight our planet faces in the face of the climate emergency. The relay will pass a handful of outstanding climate-positive projects along the route – and our Winmarleigh carbon farm was chosen as one of them.

The relay reached the village of Winmarleigh at approximately 12noon on Sunday 2 October. The baton was carried by Lancashire Wildlife Trust CEO, Tom Burditt, along with a team of runners from across Lancashire Wildlife Trust.

Tom said, “It was really great to be involved in the Running out of Time relay, it felt like being in a little part of history. We’re so pleased that our inspiring Winmarleigh carbon farm, where we are innovating nature-based solutions to the climate crisis, has been chosen as a highlighted project. It’s fantastic to be literally passing the baton on from COP26, where Lancashire Wildlife Trust took part in the Virtual Peatland Pavilion and where a number of members of our Youth Council spoke and took part in discussions.

“We need to take serious steps to address the climate emergency now. The carbon farm project is looking at the vital role that our peatlands have to play, but we have to focus our energies on all of our habitats; from woodlands to sand dunes. Our climate and nature crises are inextricably linked, we cannot solve one without solving the other.”

The Winmarleigh carbon farm is a pioneering project working to restore the carbon storage capacity of peatlands. Situated on an area of lowland peatland that was drained for conversion to agriculture in the 1970’s, the carbon farm project has re-wet the land and planted a permanent cover crop of sphagnum moss (provided by project partners BeadaMoss®). This aims to protect existing soil carbon and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the site, along with eventually sequestering further carbon from the atmosphere.

When a peatland is drained or degraded in any way, the carbon is the peat is exposed to air and oxidises to form carbon dioxide which is released and contributes to our climate emergency. In fact, approximately four per cent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions come from degraded peatlands¹ (in comparison, aviation accounts for seven per cent²).

However, many farmers and landowners rely on the income from the agricultural use of drained peatlands, so the carbon farm is investigating alternative climate-friendly land management options for these areas that would allow the land to remain financially viable. The product from the land would be the carbon, and this could be funded through a mixture of private investment via carbon compensation schemes, or government subsidies.

We have been working with researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University to monitor greenhouse gas emissions from the site. In the two years since the carbon farm was created, we have already seen an 86 per cent reduction in CO²e emissions and are expecting the site to start re-forming peat and sequestering carbon once a full carpet of sphagnum moss is achieved.

References

[1] UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology - https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-summary-Aviation.pdf

[2] Climate Change Committee – Sixth carbon budget: Aviation - https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Sector-summary-Aviation.pdf