— Ireland’s Peatlands, the Return of Water, and the Human Cost of a Just Transition
NEOTERRAIN Journal | Environmental Geography of the World #02 — Ireland
Across the Irish landscape, there are places where dark, waterlogged earth stretches toward the horizon.
Peatlands.
Not magnificent forests. Not towering glaciers. Just quiet expanses of wet ground, where mosses and other plants grow, die, and accumulate over centuries and millennia, their remains preserved by water.
Beneath this seemingly ordinary landscape lies an extraordinary record of time.
For generations, this dark earth warmed Irish homes and helped power the nation.
Today, Ireland is attempting something that might once have seemed unthinkable.
It is bringing water back to the land from which water was deliberately removed.
Why would a country rewet the very ground it once drained to extract fuel?
The answer is not simply about protecting nature.
It is also about the future of work, the meaning of progress, and the difficult choices that arise when a society begins to reconsider what its land is worth.
01 | Beneath the Soil, an Extraordinary Accumulation of Time
Peat forms when plants grow in wet environments and their remains accumulate faster than they can fully decompose.
In waterlogged soil, oxygen is limited. Decomposition slows, allowing carbon captured by plants to remain stored in the ground over long periods.
Ireland’s National Parks and Wildlife Service describes healthy peatlands as important long-term carbon stores.
They also absorb, retain, and gradually release water, while providing habitats for distinctive plants and animals.
A peatland is not empty land.
It is a landscape performing vital functions, many of them invisible to the casual observer.
Yet for generations, people valued peat for another reason.
It could burn.
Cut from the ground and dried, peat became a source of household fuel. In Ireland, domestic turf cutting developed into a longstanding practice connected to local customs, livelihoods, and rights to use the land.
Later, industrial peat extraction expanded across large areas.
Peat supplied electricity generation and horticultural industries, as well as fuel.
But extracting peat on a large scale required changing the land itself.
Drainage channels were dug.
Water levels were lowered.
And with that seemingly practical intervention, the ecological role of the peatland began to change.
02 | What Happens When Water Is Removed?
For thousands of years, water helped protect the carbon stored beneath the surface.
Drainage exposes peat to oxygen.
Organic matter begins to decompose more rapidly, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The emissions do not occur only when peat is burned.
They can continue from the drained land long after extraction has stopped.
Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency identifies drainage of peat soils, including those used for agriculture and peat extraction, as an important source of greenhouse gas emissions associated with land use.
This reveals a troubling imbalance.
Peat takes an immense amount of time to accumulate.
Yet the conditions that preserve it can be disrupted relatively quickly.
Stopping extraction, therefore, is not necessarily enough.
If the land remains drained, its stored carbon may continue to be lost.
This is why peatland restoration in Ireland goes beyond the decision to stop digging.
It begins with another question.
How can water be brought back?
03 | When a Peat Company Becomes a Restorer of Wetlands
One of the most striking symbols of Ireland’s transition is Bord na Móna.
For decades, the company was closely associated with peat extraction and the country’s energy system.
It stopped peat harvesting in 2020 and formally announced in 2021 that peat extraction on its lands had permanently ended.
Today, the company is shifting toward peatland rehabilitation, renewable energy, and other activities.
This does not mean that every form of peat cutting throughout Ireland has ceased.
Domestic turf cutting, including practices associated with particular land rights, remains a separate and more complicated issue.
Nevertheless, Bord na Móna’s transformation represents a profound change.
Land once valued for the fuel that could be removed from it is now being managed for what can be restored.
A government-supported rehabilitation programme covers approximately 33,000 hectares of formerly industrial peatlands.
The aim is to improve water conditions and support the recovery of habitats suited to these altered landscapes.
But restoration is not as simple as blocking a drainage ditch and watching nature return.
The original peatland cannot necessarily be recreated within a few years.
Every site has its own history.
Its own topography.
Its own remaining peat deposits.
Its own ecological limitations.
Water levels must be managed. Vegetation must be observed. Greenhouse gas emissions must be measured over time.
Research supported by Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency emphasizes the importance of long-term monitoring in assessing the effects of rewetting.
Restoration is not the act of turning back the clock.
It is the patient work of creating conditions in which damaged land can begin to function differently.
The past cannot simply be recovered. But the future can still be shaped.
04 | A Just Transition: Just for Whom?
From the perspective of climate policy, the direction may appear clear.
Reduce peat extraction.
Restore damaged wetlands.
Cut greenhouse gas emissions.
But for the people who built their lives around the peat industry, the transition is far more personal.
A worker who once operated harvesting equipment may now participate in land rehabilitation.
Others may need new skills, different employment, or opportunities in emerging industries.
Communities that depended on peat-related economic activity must find new foundations for their future.
Ireland has framed this challenge through the concept of a Just Transition.
The European Union’s Just Transition Fund supports affected regions, including Ireland’s Midlands, with initiatives involving peatland restoration, economic diversification, and the reuse of industrial heritage.
The principle is straightforward, even if its implementation is not.
A transition cannot be considered successful solely because environmental indicators improve.
It must also consider the people whose livelihoods are transformed.
Domestic turf cutting adds another layer of complexity.
In certain protected raised bogs, restrictions on cutting have been introduced to protect vulnerable habitats.
Compensation arrangements exist for affected landowners and holders of turf-cutting rights.
Here, environmental protection intersects with inherited customs, property rights, and local identity.
It is easy to say that a damaging activity should stop.
It is harder to answer what happens next to those who depended on it.
Who bears the cost?
Who receives support?
What new roles can people take on?
A just transition is not simply about ending an old industry. It is about ensuring that communities have a meaningful place in what comes next.
05 | Bringing Back Water Means Redefining Value
A drained peatland can be measured through production.
How much peat was extracted?
How much fuel was sold?
How much electricity was generated?
These are familiar economic measures.
But a healthy, waterlogged peatland provides benefits that are less visible in conventional accounts.
It stores carbon.
It supports biodiversity.
It holds water and influences how that water moves through the landscape.
These functions may not appear as daily sales or immediate profits.
Yet they contribute to the long-term stability of ecosystems and communities.
Ireland’s transition therefore raises a question larger than peat extraction.
What do we consider valuable when a landscape is no longer judged primarily by what we can remove from it?
Previously, draining the land created work.
Now, restoring water levels, monitoring ecological change, and maintaining rehabilitated sites can also create work.
Bord na Móna has reported that former peat-industry employees are participating in rehabilitation activities.
The relationship between people and land is changing.
Still, rewetting should not be mistaken for an instant climate solution.
Restored water levels do not automatically turn a degraded peatland into an ideal carbon sink.
Greenhouse gas balances depend on local conditions, vegetation, and water management.
Long-term observation remains essential.
Effective restoration also requires sustained funding and the participation of local communities.
Nature cannot be divided neatly into land that people use and land that people protect.
There are histories embedded in every landscape.
Investments already made.
Jobs once performed.
Families whose lives have been shaped by the land.
And new responsibilities that society hopes the land will fulfil.
Changing its future requires confronting all of them.
06 | The Next Purpose of the Black Earth
In the previous chapter of this series, we travelled to Iceland.
There, retreating glaciers are reshaping the conditions that support rivers, lakes, energy systems, and tourism.
In Ireland, we encounter what seems almost the opposite movement.
People are deliberately returning water to land they once worked so hard to drain.
Yet both countries confront a similar question.
When the relationship between people and nature changes, how should we redefine the value of a place?
From a distance, an Irish peatland may appear quiet.
A dark expanse of ground.
Shallow water.
Low vegetation moving gently in the wind.
It may seem as though nothing is being produced there.
But beneath the surface lies an accumulation of time.
Carbon stored over generations.
Habitats shaped by water.
And memories of the people who cut, dried, carried, and burned peat to sustain their lives.
Ireland is not simply trying to reconstruct an untouched landscape from the past.
It is asking what responsibilities this land should carry in the future.
A place that once supplied fuel may now help protect stored carbon, support wildlife, and create different kinds of work.
That transformation will not happen overnight.
It will require patience, resources, scientific knowledge, and the trust of local communities.
The black earth has already served one chapter of Ireland’s history.
Now, another chapter is being written.
Not by removing more from the ground.
But by allowing water to return.
The land we once burned may yet teach us how to protect what remains.
EDITOR’S NOTE — NEOTERRAIN
There is something deeply human about the history of Ireland’s peatlands.
For generations, people looked at the dark earth and saw warmth.
A fire in the hearth.
A home protected from the cold.
A source of employment.
A means of keeping everyday life moving.
It would be too easy to look back from the present and describe those choices simply as mistakes.
They were also responses to the needs and possibilities of their time.
Today, our understanding has changed.
We know more about the carbon stored beneath wetlands and the consequences of draining them.
And so we are beginning to ask the land to fulfil a different purpose.
But changing our relationship with nature also means changing our relationship with one another.
A landscape cannot be restored through ecological ambition alone if the people who depend on it are left behind.
The workers, families, and communities connected to peat extraction are not separate from the environmental story.
They are part of it.
Perhaps the most meaningful question is not whether we can return a landscape to what it once was.
Perhaps it is whether we can create a future in which both the land and its people have a place.
Ireland’s peatlands remind us that environmental restoration is not only about recovering nature.
It is about reconsidering what we owe to the places that have sustained us.
Sometimes, progress means learning not what more we can take from the earth, but what we must allow it to keep.
NEOTERRAIN
Embracing complexity without reducing it to simplicity.
References and Further Reading
National Parks and Wildlife Service (Ireland) — Peatland conservation, habitats, and turf-cutting policies
https://www.npws.ie/
Environmental Protection Agency (Ireland) — Greenhouse gas emissions, peatland research, and restoration monitoring
https://www.epa.ie/
Bord na Móna — Peat extraction transition and peatland rehabilitation
https://www.bordnamona.ie/
Government of Ireland — Peatlands rehabilitation and Just Transition policies
https://www.gov.ie/
European Commission — Just Transition Fund
https://commission.europa.eu/
