Using green finance for peatland restoration

14 November 2024

Paul Leadbitter, the Peatland Programme Manager for the North Pennines National Landscape team, gave an insightful talk at the Eurosite Annual Meeting 2024 on the importance of working in partnership and the use of green finance for peatland restoration.

Paul outlined that the Great North Bog initiative is a key demonstration of how collaboration between partners is driving peatland restoration forward. The delivery partners are North Pennines National Landscape, Yorkshire Peat Partnership, Moors for the Future Partnership, Cumbria Peat Partnership, Northumberland Peat Partnership and Lancashire Peat Partnership. It is the largest collaborative peatland conservation effort in the UK. Collectively the partners have over 70 years of experience restoring peatlands and have so far restored over 1600 km2 of damaged bog.

The Great North Bog partners have created a green finance strategy for the private sector so that they can support peatland restoration through the purchase of carbon credits. There have been 15 Expressions of Interest from the private sector and four finance partners are currently in place. This is an exciting development in securing finances for peatland restoration.

Paul also shared with his audience the current priorities of the Great North Bog, such as developing further financial models and exploring how these can be combined with existing public funding. He explained that the Great North Bog partners are continuing to build on their successful collaboration and will use this to keep up momentum and expand efforts to restore the vast northern peatlands.