Climate Change category win at the County Durham Environment Awards 

The North Pennine AONB Partnership’s Peatland Programme has won the Climate Change category in the County Durham Environment Awards.

Peatlands are the world’s largest terrestrial carbon stores and are essential to global efforts to fight climate change. While healthy peatlands become carbon retainers and take in greenhouse gases, damaged peatlands do the reverse, turning them into dangerous carbon emitters which add to further climate change.

Additionally, restoration has a significant impact on how much rainwater flows off the moorland, slowing the flow and reducing the risk of flooding in lowland areas. The bare peat found on degraded peatlands speeds up rainfall running off the moors, increasing flood risk and sedimentation downstream. As more plants grow on a restoration site, there are benefits for the important upland wildlife which is characteristic of the North Pennines.

The North Pennines AONB Partnership has developed techniques to stop bare peat eroding and encourage vegetation to return. This involves increasing water levels using leaky dams made from stone and coir (coconut matting), cutting heather brash and mosses from other areas of intact moorland and spreading them over bare peat to act as a mulch for plants to grow back, and using machinery to carefully reduce the angle of eroding peat faces known as haggs, allowing vegetation to grow back.

To date, the AONB’s Peatland Programme has worked with partners and landowners to restore nearly 400km2 of peatland across the North Pennines AONB, an area greater than three times the size of Newcastle upon Tyne, as well as successfully raising over £25 million to restore peatlands in England. Read more about peatland restoration here.

The Peatland Programme’s connection to the UN and the global fight against climate change was further demonstrated by attendance and session hosting in the Peatland Pavilion at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) in 2021. Read more here.

The North Pennines AONB Partnership is one of the three founding partners in the new Great North Bog (GNB) initiative, which is working towards securing £200 million to restore the remaining damaged peatland in the north of England over the next 20 years.

This is the second time the AONB has won the County Durham Environment Awards Climate Change category.