Biodiversity sustaining carbon management in degraded lands and cut-away peatlands in Northern periphery and Arctic regions

Globally, carbon capture should be increased maintaining biodiversity at the same time. In Northern periphery (NP), there are degraded and neglected areas whose utilization could be developed towards efficient carbon capture. In Finland cut-away peatlands are underutilized areas due to the changing energy policy. In Iceland serious environmental problem is the loss of vegetation by wind erosion and in Norway the cultural landscape includes areas that are intensively farmed such as coastal heaths but could be harnessed for carbon farming, too. These areas could be rediscovered for carbon capture and utilization for climate change adaptation; for ex. short rotation coppicing in the cut-away peatlands. Sustainable exploitation of targeted project lands and fields in NP, needs implementation models that benefit landowners and policy makes and biodiversity, too.

Project aim is to build up operational model for the Northern periphery to re-utilize these areas for carbon capture and utilization (CCU) in the biodiversity maintaining way. Sustainability covers the cooperation of stakeholders, encourages entrepreneurship development for improved regional economy and maintain biodiversity. To succeed with this, landowners needs incomes to maintain the synergy between carbon management and biodiversity sustaining. This is the unique aspect of our project: to synergize effective CCU and develop existing biodiversity indicator system at the same. Presently there are difficulties to estimate the biodiversity effects as the schemes of CCU in biological systems are hardly meeting existing biodiversity indicator classifications.

With the transnational co-operation, beneficial development of sparsely populated communities in Northern periphery is achieved, and results in innovative solutions for carbon capture and utilization. Concrete result from the project is procedure to plan the sustainable utilization of these areas with common awareness of possibilities and threats gained.The aim of this preparatory project is to develop a high quality Main project applications.