For peat's sake
A few years before the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market almost brought the world’s financial system to its knees and turned banking and securities firms into pariahs, one of those firms, Goldman Sachs, committed a remarkable act of generosity. Having acquired 272,000 hectares of land on the Chilean half of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego in December 2003 as a result of a legal settlement with the Trillium Corporation, which had tried to establish a logging operation on the island, the firm’s charitable fund handed the land over to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
It was one of the largest private donations of land for conservation in history, and gave the WCS control of some of the world’s southernmost old-growth forests, not to mention its most significant peat bogs. Dominated by lenga, a deciduous tree similar to the beech, this wild, windswept land is home to guanaco (a wild relative of the llama), the endangered culpeo fox, the Andean condor, and the Magellanic woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in the Americas.
The first act of the advisory board put together by the WCS to oversee the reserve, which is composed primarily of a mix of scientists and members of the private sector, principally Chileans, was to name the reserve Karukinka, meaning ‘our land’ – the original name given to the area by the island’s now-extinct indigenous inhabitants, the Selk’nam. Since then, the WCS has established a permanent presence of park rangers and begun research into the ecology and migratory processes of the reserve’s guanaco population.
Goldman Sachs’ generosity extended to the provision of several years’ worth of financial support, but now the WCS must look elsewhere for the funds it needs to maintain the reserve. It’s hoping to tap into Chilean Patagonia’s growing tourist market, and is in the process of opening several hiking trails and a lodge in the region. The area’s plight has been publicised around the world thanks to the presence of the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race (WPER), an eco-endurance challenge that takes place in Chilean Patagonia each year – at times within the reserve itself (see The last wild race).
Goldman Sachs’ gift originally took the form of two large, unconnected blocks, but in 2007, the WCS finalised a deal with the local community that gave it title to a further 40,636 hectares to create an ecological corridor between the two tracts of land. It later added another 40,000-hectare strip of land along the coast.
One of the most pressing concerns has been the eradication of beavers, which were introduced into Tierra del Fuego in 1946. Since then, their populations have expanded significantly, and their dams cause extensive damage to riparian areas. But it’s the protection of the reserve’s peat bogs that has commanded the most attention.
Carbon capture
Peat, which in Patagonia sits beneath a layer of unique red, orange and green sphagnum moss, is formed by the accumulation of plant material in a water-saturated environment. The lack of oxygen and acidity of the water inhibits the decomposition of the organic matter, leading to its slow build-up.
By holding this material in a sort of suspended animation, the world’s peatlands act as an extremely significant carbon storehouse, holding in the region of 500 billion tonnes of it – twice as much as is incorporated into all of the trees in all of the world’s forests – accumulated over tens of millions of years.
‘In Tierra del Fuego, we have some eight or ten metres [of peat] under the floor level,’ explains Barbara Saavedra, director of WCS Chile. ‘It can be thought of as huge boxes of carbon storage, and although our peat bogs are younger and not as deep as those in the boreal areas of the Northern Hemisphere, they still perform this vital function.
‘Most of the world’s peat is in the Northern Hemisphere,’ she continues. ‘But in the Southern Hemisphere, there is no land other than Tierra del Fuego that contains [significant reserves of] peat. That makes it very important, as it is, along with our forests, the most important terrestrial ecosystem in the hemisphere capable of capturing a significant amount of carbon from the atmosphere. If we destroy it, that could become a problem.’
The main threats to the world’s peat bogs are drainage for agriculture and forestry, and mining – primarily for fuel, but also for use in agriculture and horticulture. Peat mining is big business: in the EU alone, the annual trade is worth some €400million. Rising global demand has drawn mining companies from around the world to Tierra del Fuego, and increasing volumes of peat are being exported to Europe, Japan and the USA for use as organic fertiliser and garden bedding.
The WCS hopes that Karukinka will offer protection for the 750 square kilometres of peat bog (a total volume of about 2.6 billion cubic metres of peat, equivalent to around 79 million tonnes of carbon) within its boundaries. However, given the high quality of the reserve’s peat, as well as its close proximity to transport infrastructure, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to protect, even though it’s officially a conservation zone. ‘Here in Chile, peat is considered a mineral, and it’s governed under mining law,’ Saavedra explains. ‘That means that even though the WCS owns the land, we don’t own the subsoil or the peat.
‘Peat mining is a growing activity, and it’s coming closer and closer to our peatlands,’ she continues. ‘That is a real threat. In Argentina, the peat mining is even larger than in Chile, and we’ve just been lucky that it isn’t happening in Karukinka at the moment; but it is just luck. Every month, we check in with the mining ministry to see whether a new claim has been established.’
Tourist draw
In an attempt to head off the threat, the WCS is working on a number of ways to make the Karukinka reserve financially viable in its own right, in the hope of ensuring that the land’s value isn’t seen only in terms of the potential for profit from peat mining. Chilean Patagonia is becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination, particularly for those seeking outdoor adventure, and Karukinka’s remoteness and its wild, pristine beauty are a strong potential draw. The WCS is also working with Nomadas Outdoor Services, the organisers of the WPER, to design trails through the park and to develop the land for controlled tourism.
The WCS has also been assessing the extent of the peat extraction that is taking place just outside Karukinka and trying to find ways to make the industry itself more sustainable. ‘Our aim is to develop a sustainable peat harvest by working on two levels,’ Saavedra says. ‘At the geographical scale, we need to designate areas that can’t be exploited for peat, and at the local level, we need to develop extraction and restoration tools that will enable the recovery of the hydrological quality of the peat and the moss carpet that covers it.’
The WCS also hopes to one day be able to offer Karukinka peatland as carbon-offset credits for local and global companies. It’s currently working on a project to quantify the amount of carbon that Karukinka’s peat keeps out of the atmosphere, the threats it faces, and steps that can be taken to preserve it. Ultimately, the aim is to generate income from the credits to fund the peat’s protection.
The challenge the organisation faces, however, is that as the peat already exists, its protection can’t be said to positively offset emissions – that is only the case if a specific area of peat had been commissioned for mining and the finances gained from offsetting would enable the WCS to directly prevent that mining operation from taking place. ‘The carbon market has extremely specific rules that you need to follow, and we haven’t had any success so far because those rules haven’t been developed for peatlands yet,’ Saavedra says. ‘We hope the situation will change sooner rather than later, and when it does, it will help Karukinka and our conservation model significantly.’
To learn more, visit www.karukinkanatural.cl
The last wild race
At the same time as Karukinka was set up, local geologist Stjepan Pavicic created the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race, now one of the world’s most respected eco-endurance challenges, in order to raise international awareness of the region’s fragile environment, with the ultimate aim of generating funds to protect it.
‘The world sees the Patagonia region of Chile as a classic example of pristine wilderness, and much of it is,’ says Pavicic, a Chilean Croat born and bred on the wild, windswept plains of Chilean Tierra del Fuego. ‘But the danger we face is that the rich biodiversity has a strong commercial value, and for that reason it is not only important to promote preservation, but also to match land value in order to finance its protection.’
Given Pavicic’s love of adventure, nothing fitted the bill better than a human-powered 600-kilometre-plus non-stop endurance route through the wilderness. To date, over its eight incarnations, competitors from 25 different nations have raced through regions previously unexplored and unnamed. ‘The race consistently does its job of raising global awareness and it has grown rapidly in the past few years,’ says Pavicic. ‘We now want to take on an environmental partner that can bring it to the next level and financially support conservation in Chilean Patagonia.’
For the WCS, the partnership is just as important from an operational sense, as Pavicic is the region’s most experienced explorer and has a trail-finding talent that is second to none. ‘We have a large tract of land in Chilean Tierra del Fuego that holds the most beautiful landscape down there, but it’s a place that needs to be explored to learn more about it,’ says Barbara Saavedra, director of WCS Chile. ‘We see the race as a good tool to advance the exploration of the area, and also as a promoter of the conservation work we do there.’
For further information about the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race, visit www.patagonianexpeditionrace.com
It was one of the largest private donations of land for conservation in history, and gave the WCS control of some of the world’s southernmost old-growth forests, not to mention its most significant peat bogs. Dominated by lenga, a deciduous tree similar to the beech, this wild, windswept land is home to guanaco (a wild relative of the llama), the endangered culpeo fox, the Andean condor, and the Magellanic woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in the Americas.
The first act of the advisory board put together by the WCS to oversee the reserve, which is composed primarily of a mix of scientists and members of the private sector, principally Chileans, was to name the reserve Karukinka, meaning ‘our land’ – the original name given to the area by the island’s now-extinct indigenous inhabitants, the Selk’nam. Since then, the WCS has established a permanent presence of park rangers and begun research into the ecology and migratory processes of the reserve’s guanaco population.
Goldman Sachs’ generosity extended to the provision of several years’ worth of financial support, but now the WCS must look elsewhere for the funds it needs to maintain the reserve. It’s hoping to tap into Chilean Patagonia’s growing tourist market, and is in the process of opening several hiking trails and a lodge in the region. The area’s plight has been publicised around the world thanks to the presence of the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race (WPER), an eco-endurance challenge that takes place in Chilean Patagonia each year – at times within the reserve itself (see The last wild race).
Goldman Sachs’ gift originally took the form of two large, unconnected blocks, but in 2007, the WCS finalised a deal with the local community that gave it title to a further 40,636 hectares to create an ecological corridor between the two tracts of land. It later added another 40,000-hectare strip of land along the coast.
One of the most pressing concerns has been the eradication of beavers, which were introduced into Tierra del Fuego in 1946. Since then, their populations have expanded significantly, and their dams cause extensive damage to riparian areas. But it’s the protection of the reserve’s peat bogs that has commanded the most attention.
Carbon capture
Peat, which in Patagonia sits beneath a layer of unique red, orange and green sphagnum moss, is formed by the accumulation of plant material in a water-saturated environment. The lack of oxygen and acidity of the water inhibits the decomposition of the organic matter, leading to its slow build-up.
By holding this material in a sort of suspended animation, the world’s peatlands act as an extremely significant carbon storehouse, holding in the region of 500 billion tonnes of it – twice as much as is incorporated into all of the trees in all of the world’s forests – accumulated over tens of millions of years.
‘In Tierra del Fuego, we have some eight or ten metres [of peat] under the floor level,’ explains Barbara Saavedra, director of WCS Chile. ‘It can be thought of as huge boxes of carbon storage, and although our peat bogs are younger and not as deep as those in the boreal areas of the Northern Hemisphere, they still perform this vital function.
‘Most of the world’s peat is in the Northern Hemisphere,’ she continues. ‘But in the Southern Hemisphere, there is no land other than Tierra del Fuego that contains [significant reserves of] peat. That makes it very important, as it is, along with our forests, the most important terrestrial ecosystem in the hemisphere capable of capturing a significant amount of carbon from the atmosphere. If we destroy it, that could become a problem.’
The main threats to the world’s peat bogs are drainage for agriculture and forestry, and mining – primarily for fuel, but also for use in agriculture and horticulture. Peat mining is big business: in the EU alone, the annual trade is worth some €400million. Rising global demand has drawn mining companies from around the world to Tierra del Fuego, and increasing volumes of peat are being exported to Europe, Japan and the USA for use as organic fertiliser and garden bedding.
The WCS hopes that Karukinka will offer protection for the 750 square kilometres of peat bog (a total volume of about 2.6 billion cubic metres of peat, equivalent to around 79 million tonnes of carbon) within its boundaries. However, given the high quality of the reserve’s peat, as well as its close proximity to transport infrastructure, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to protect, even though it’s officially a conservation zone. ‘Here in Chile, peat is considered a mineral, and it’s governed under mining law,’ Saavedra explains. ‘That means that even though the WCS owns the land, we don’t own the subsoil or the peat.
‘Peat mining is a growing activity, and it’s coming closer and closer to our peatlands,’ she continues. ‘That is a real threat. In Argentina, the peat mining is even larger than in Chile, and we’ve just been lucky that it isn’t happening in Karukinka at the moment; but it is just luck. Every month, we check in with the mining ministry to see whether a new claim has been established.’
Tourist draw
In an attempt to head off the threat, the WCS is working on a number of ways to make the Karukinka reserve financially viable in its own right, in the hope of ensuring that the land’s value isn’t seen only in terms of the potential for profit from peat mining. Chilean Patagonia is becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination, particularly for those seeking outdoor adventure, and Karukinka’s remoteness and its wild, pristine beauty are a strong potential draw. The WCS is also working with Nomadas Outdoor Services, the organisers of the WPER, to design trails through the park and to develop the land for controlled tourism.
The WCS has also been assessing the extent of the peat extraction that is taking place just outside Karukinka and trying to find ways to make the industry itself more sustainable. ‘Our aim is to develop a sustainable peat harvest by working on two levels,’ Saavedra says. ‘At the geographical scale, we need to designate areas that can’t be exploited for peat, and at the local level, we need to develop extraction and restoration tools that will enable the recovery of the hydrological quality of the peat and the moss carpet that covers it.’
The WCS also hopes to one day be able to offer Karukinka peatland as carbon-offset credits for local and global companies. It’s currently working on a project to quantify the amount of carbon that Karukinka’s peat keeps out of the atmosphere, the threats it faces, and steps that can be taken to preserve it. Ultimately, the aim is to generate income from the credits to fund the peat’s protection.
The challenge the organisation faces, however, is that as the peat already exists, its protection can’t be said to positively offset emissions – that is only the case if a specific area of peat had been commissioned for mining and the finances gained from offsetting would enable the WCS to directly prevent that mining operation from taking place. ‘The carbon market has extremely specific rules that you need to follow, and we haven’t had any success so far because those rules haven’t been developed for peatlands yet,’ Saavedra says. ‘We hope the situation will change sooner rather than later, and when it does, it will help Karukinka and our conservation model significantly.’
To learn more, visit www.karukinkanatural.cl
The last wild race
At the same time as Karukinka was set up, local geologist Stjepan Pavicic created the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race, now one of the world’s most respected eco-endurance challenges, in order to raise international awareness of the region’s fragile environment, with the ultimate aim of generating funds to protect it.
‘The world sees the Patagonia region of Chile as a classic example of pristine wilderness, and much of it is,’ says Pavicic, a Chilean Croat born and bred on the wild, windswept plains of Chilean Tierra del Fuego. ‘But the danger we face is that the rich biodiversity has a strong commercial value, and for that reason it is not only important to promote preservation, but also to match land value in order to finance its protection.’
Given Pavicic’s love of adventure, nothing fitted the bill better than a human-powered 600-kilometre-plus non-stop endurance route through the wilderness. To date, over its eight incarnations, competitors from 25 different nations have raced through regions previously unexplored and unnamed. ‘The race consistently does its job of raising global awareness and it has grown rapidly in the past few years,’ says Pavicic. ‘We now want to take on an environmental partner that can bring it to the next level and financially support conservation in Chilean Patagonia.’
For the WCS, the partnership is just as important from an operational sense, as Pavicic is the region’s most experienced explorer and has a trail-finding talent that is second to none. ‘We have a large tract of land in Chilean Tierra del Fuego that holds the most beautiful landscape down there, but it’s a place that needs to be explored to learn more about it,’ says Barbara Saavedra, director of WCS Chile. ‘We see the race as a good tool to advance the exploration of the area, and also as a promoter of the conservation work we do there.’
For further information about the Wenger Patagonian Expedition Race, visit www.patagonianexpeditionrace.com
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