[1] Paludiculture combines the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from drained peatlands through rewetting with continued land use and biomass production under wet conditions.
[5][6] Drained peatlands cause numerous negative environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emission, nutrient leaching, subsidence and loss of biodiversity.
In the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, it is defined as the productive land use of wet and rewetted peatlands that preserves the peat soil and thereby minimizes CO2 emissions and subsidence.
The review also suggests that, to be sustainable, paludiculture should only use native vegetation to restore peatlands whilst producing biomass, as opposed to any wetland plants which have the possibility of surviving.
To conserve, restore and improve management of peat lands is a cost efficient and relatively easy way to maintain ecosystem services.
The emissions emanating from rewetted peatland with paludiculture will also be affected by the land-use in terms of type of use (agriculture, forestry, grazing etc.
However local communities, especially in the tropics, maintain their livelihood by draining and using the peatland in various ways e.g. agriculture, grazing, and peat mining.
[4] For example, studies of Sphagnum cultivation on re-wetted peat bogs in Germany shows a significant decrease of greenhouse gas emission compared to a control with irrigated ditches.
[22] In contrast, a high temperature climate accelerates decomposition rates, causing degraded tropical peatlands to contribute more substantially to global green house gas emissions.
Between 1990 and 2015, cultivation (for management including industrial and small-holder agriculture) had increased from 11 to 50% of forested peatlands in Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo.
[4] In Malaysia and Indonesia in the last twenty years, peat swamp forests have retreated from covering 77% of peatlands to 36%, endangering many mammals and birds in the region.
[26] The conversion of natural tropical peatlands into other land uses leads to peat fires and the associated health effects, soil subsidence increasing flood risks, substantial greenhouse gas emissions and loss of biodiversity.
Paludiculture is researched as a sustainable solution to reduce and reverse the degradation of peat swamp forests, and includes traditional local agricultural practices which predate the use of the term.
The Bantu people in Cuvette Central use peatlands for fishing, hunting and gathering, as well as small-scale agriculture near terra firme forests.
This trade has been stiffed by 2006 tariffs and sanctions,[33] and growing jelutong in monocultures is considered less efficient than crops like smallholder oil palm.
For example, Dayak communities only cultivate peatlands shallower than three meters for small-scale farming of sago and jelutong in coastal areas where the sea inputs nutrients.
[34] Peat subsidence and CO2 emissions have still been found present in agroforestry small-holdings in re-wetted peatlands in Jambi and Central Kalimantan, even those with native species.
[35] Mestizo communities in Loreto, Peru use peatlands for hunting and gathering, and sustainably cultivating native palms, which they replant to restore the resource.
Both boreal and temperate peatlands are primarily formed from bryophytes and graminoids, displaying slower rates of accumulation and decomposition comparative to the tropics .
Their bog site, on the Acadian Peninsula, was previously used for block-cutting peat for fuel and so consisted of ditches of Sphagnum and raised areas of other vegetation.
[37] The Finnish Forest Research Institute and Vapo Oy, Finland's largest peat mining company, manage around 10 hectares for experiments in cultivating Sphagnum for restoration and to produce substrates.
[38] The Greifswald Mire Center lists six research projects for cultivating Sphagnum as a raw material for substrates and restoring moors in Germany: Hankhausen, Drenth, Parovinzialmoor, Ramsloh, Sedelsberg and Südfeld.
[40] In Mecklenburg -West Pomerania, Greifswald University's ongoing Paludi-Pellets-Project aims to create an efficient biofuel source from sedges, reeds and canary grass in the form of dry pellets.
[41] Renewable energy company Bord na Móna began peat moss trials in 2012 to restore Sphagnum in raised bogs for potential horticulture.
Researchers from Vilnius Institute of Botany transplanted sections of Sphagnum from a neighbouring degraded raised bog to the exposed peat surface.
[38] The ongoing "DESIRE" project is investigating peatland restoration and paludiculture in the Neman River catchment area to reduce nutrient run-off into the Baltic.
[16] In the ongoing "Omhoog met het Veen - AddMire in the Netherlands" research project, Landscape Noord-Holland aims to investigate the restoration of reed beds and wet heathlands on moors previously converted for agriculture as well as to raise awareness about peatland degradation.