Table of Contents
BASICS
• The Brazzaville declaration was singed to promote better management and conservation world’s largest tropical at lands – Cuvett e Central region in Congo Basin from unregulated land use and prevent its drainage and degradation.
• It was signed jointly by Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Republic of Congo and Indonesia on the sidelines of Third Partners Meeting of Global Peat lands Initiative held in
Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.
CUVETTE CENTRALE REGION
• A region of forests and wetlands in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• Different definitions consider the region to extend into the Republic of the Congo as well.
• The Cuvette Centrale lies in the center of the Congo Basin, and is bounded on the west, north, and east by the arc of the Congo River.
PEATLANDS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
• Peat lands are a type of wetlands which are among the most valuable ecosystems on Earth
• Peat lands are the largest natural terrestrial carbon store; the area covered by near natural peat land worldwide (>3 million km2) sequesters 0.37 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a
year – storing more carbon than all other vegetation types in the world combined.
NOTES
• Peat lands are a type of wetlands that occur in almost every country on Earth, currently covering 3% of the global land surface.
• In these areas, year-round waterlogged conditions slow the process of plant decomposition to such an extent that dead plants accumulate to form peat. Over millennia this material
builds up and becomes several meters thick.
NOTES
• Large amounts of carbon, fixed from the atmosphere into plant tissues through photosynthesis, are locked away in peat soils, representing a valuable global carbon store
• A lack of awareness of the benefits of peat lands means that they have been severely over exploited and damaged as a result of actions including drainage, agricultural conversion, burning and mining for fuel, among others. About 15% of the world’s peat lands – covering
less than 0.4% of the global land surface – have been drained. This has released huge amounts of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), from the carbon stored within peat soils.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT ?
• Damaged peat lands contribute about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions from the land use sector. CO2 emissions from drained peatlands are estimated at 1.3 gigatonnes of CO2
annually. This is equivalent to 5.6% of global anthropological CO2 emissions. Fires in Indonesian peat swamp forests in 2015, for example, emitted nearly 16 million tonnes of CO2 a day. This is
more than the daily emissions from the entire US economy.
GLOBAL PEAT LANDS INITIATIVE
• GPI is multi-partner United Nations Environment Programmed (UNEP) initiative launched at the Global Landscapes Forum in Marrakesh in 2016.
• It is effort by leading experts and institutions to save peat lands as the world’s largest terrestrial organic carbon stock and to prevent it being emitted into the atmosphere.
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