Carbon futures in the mire? Knowledge controversies in European peatland restoration and remaking

In Europe, vast swathes of peatland have historically been drained for agriculture, forestry, or mining, generating significant greenhouse gas emissions. Scientific and policy interest in peat restoration as a “natural climate solution” is therefore growing rapidly, spawning diverse projects that aim either to stabilize carbon already stored in peatlands, or more ambitiously, to reactivate peat-building for carbon sequestration. This paper calls for urgent social science investigation into the remaking of peatlands for climate mitigation. Drawing from resource geography, science and technology studies, and environmental history, we contend that peatlands should be understood as “peatscapes” — landscapes characterized not merely by ecological complexity and heterogeneity, but also by long-standing conflicts between different ways of knowing, living, and working with peat itself. To illustrate this new conceptual approach, we investigate knowledge controversies provoked by European peatland restoration on three levels: (1) ontological controversies linked to divergent understandings of the nature and value of peat; (2) metrological controversies hindering emergent peatland restoration science; and (3) resource-making controversies arising from efforts to dovetail restoration with renewed imperatives of economic value generation. We argue that carbon-based agendas do not supersede, but rather selectively rework foundational ideas about peatlands, thus intensifying long-lived controversies about these ephemeral landscapes.