爱尔兰泥炭沼泽：从燃料开采到碳汇复兴的生态转型
For centuries, the soggy, brown expanses of Ireland's peat bogs were a subsistence lifeline, their turf cut by hand and burned in hearths from Connemara to the Midlands. But as the country confronts a climate reckoning, these same bogs—once viewed as wasteland or a humble fuel source—have been recast as one of Europe's most potent carbon sinks. The shift from extraction to restoration is not merely an environmental project; it is a cultural and economic upheaval, pitting century-old traditions against the existential urgency of decarbonisation.
Peatlands cover nearly a fifth of Ireland's land surface and store more carbon than all the country's forests combined. When drained and cut, however, they release that carbon at an alarming rate: each hectare of degraded bog emits as much CO₂ annually as a car driven 40,000 kilometres. The Irish government, under pressure from EU climate targets and a landmark Supreme Court ruling on peat extraction, has now banned the harvesting of turf for profit. Instead, it is pouring hundreds of millions of euros into rewetting these landscapes—blocking drains, raising water tables, and allowing Sphagnum moss and sundews to recolonise. In the midlands, where blanket bogs once fed power stations, the turbines have been replaced by excavators reshaping the land into pools and hummocks.
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