by Faizal Parish
In his statement to the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on 9th December 2004, Faizal Parish addressed the issue of peatlands and climate change.
He spoke on behalf of Global Environment Centre, Wetlands International, and Wildlife Habitat Canada, who are working together to implement a global programme on Integrated Management of Peatlands for Biodiversity and Climate Change. This programme is being implemented in conjunction with the governments of Russia. China, Indonesia and other countries in the ASEAN region, and is supported by UNEP-GEF and the governments of Canada and the Netherlands. IMCG supports the project as well.
Most importantly, the statement pointed out again that in 2002, the Conference of Parties of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands called on all its 130 parties to take urgent steps to maintain or restore peatlands in view of their key role in carbon storage and sequestration. This was further reiterated by the 180 parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity through Decision 7.16 on Biodiversity and Climate Change in February of this year. To date, however, the UNFCCC has not specifically highlighted the importance of peatlands to climate change.
The parties
to UNFCCC were strongly urged to include reference, within any decision related
to adaptation, to the key priority for assessing vulnerability of the peatland
ecosystem to climate change and implementing appropriate measures.