Open letter on peatlands in the EU Nature Restoration Law
Wetlands International Europe, supported by a broad coalition of conservationists, scientists and farmers caring for wetlands across the EU, has written an open letter to Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament, and Ulf Kristersson, Prime Minister of Sweden, to raise our concerns about the developments to reject or decrease the level of ambition in the proposed EU Nature Restoration Law with particular attention to peatlands.
We welcomed the European Commission’s proposal for a Nature Restoration Law, published in June 2022, notably due to the inclusion of targets for the restoration of peatlands. Recent developments in the European Parliament agriculture (AGRI) and fisheries (PECH) committees and a draft compromise position by the Swedish Presidency, however, substantially threaten the initial ambition of the Commission’s proposal, by either rejecting the Nature Restoration Law completely or diluting its peatland restoration targets. We are deeply concerned about the implications of either scenario on both the biodiversity and the climate crisis for which European peatlands are critically important.
We urge the Members of the European Parliament and the Council to a) adopt the Nature Restoration Law as swiftly as possible, before 2024 and b) as a minimum, adopt the level of ambition included in the European Commission’s proposal and not dilute peatland restoration targets.
