International positions on paludiculture
The conservation and rewetting of peatlands is an important task and challenge in the design of sustainable land use. Paludiculture can play a central role by combining peatland protection with forestry and agricultural production. The potential of paludiculture has been recognized by several international groups.
International bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the European Parliament have recognized the importance of paludiculture as a solution for the sustainable management of peatland sites and have included the concept in publications. In addition, there have already been two major science awards for the concept of paludiculture.
The current report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has explicitly included paludiculture as a use type of wet peatlands in its recent report "2013 SUPPLEMENT TO THE 2006 GUIDELINES: WETLANDS".
See: 2013 Supplement to the 2006 Guidelines: Wetlands Batumi October 14-18, 2013.
Last October, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published a second edition of the brochure „Peatlands - guidance for climate change mitigation by conservation, rehabilitation and sustainable use”.
To raise awareness of the importance of peatlands, the University of Greifswald has launched an initiative „Moore und organische Böden“ with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the organization "Wetlands International".