Opinion: Major Knowledge Gaps in Peatland Science Are Blocking Effective Climate Policy

In an opinion and academic commentary published by The Jakarta Post, researcher Alice Milnerdescribes a large international study she co-authored, which set out to define the most critical unanswered questions in peatland science. The effort engaged more than 100 co-authors and canvassed over 450 practitioners, researchers, and policymakers across 54 countries through an open survey offered in 21 languages; an independent expert panel then condensed the results into 50 priority research questions for the coming decade.

The study’s most striking message is that basic knowledge gaps persist about ecosystems of planetary importance. Peatlands cover only 3–4 percent of Earth’s land surface yet hold nearly one-third of global soil carbon. Despite that outsized role, large areas — particularly in the tropics — remain poorly mapped. The author cites the Congo Basin peatland complex, formally confirmed only in 2017, as evidence that globally significant carbon reservoirs can remain effectively invisible to science. This has direct policy consequences: where peatlands are uncharted, national greenhouse gas inventories and climate plans cannot fully account for them. Peatland degradation is estimated by the article to generate 5–10 percent of annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions, making accurate mapping a prerequisite for credible climate accounting. Participants also flagged concern that warming, drought, and fire could push some peatlands past tipping points at which they shift from carbon sinks to net emitters.

Restoration and equity questions feature with equal weight. The article cites a widely referenced target of rewetting at least 30 million hectares of degraded peatland by 2030 as a minimum step toward climate goals, but the survey found no consensus on transferable restoration recipes: conditions in a drained Indonesian tropical peat swamp forest differ fundamentally from those in an Arctic permafrost peatland or a British upland bog. Participants repeatedly asked whether carbon finance and conservation revenues would genuinely reach local and indigenous communities whose livelihoods are tied to peatland landscapes, and whether paludiculture — wet-farming on rewetted peat — could be made economically viable at scale. The author acknowledges that researchers made up the bulk of respondents and that some peatland-rich regions were underrepresented, limiting the study’s generalisability.