Resource information
Roughly 6.5% of the German utilized agricultural area is located on organic soils (fensand bogs). Nevertheless, the drainage of these areas in order to allow their agriculturalutilization causes roughly a third of the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of the Germanagricultural sector, being equivalent to 4% of the total German GHG emissions.Obviously, German policies trying to reduce the GHG emissions successfully must tacklethis issue. The abandonment of the cultivation of organic soils would be an effectivepolicy to reduce the GHG emissions however the question remains whether it is anefficient measure compared with the other options?In the paper we assess the mitigation costs on the basis of the standard gross margin andtenure of the agriculturally used peatlands and with the results obtained from sectormodel RAUMIS. Without engineering and transaction costs the mitigation costs are in themagnitude of 10 to 45 € per to of CO2eq. This makes rewetting of peatlands at least in themedium and long run a fairly efficient options for reducing GHG emissions, especially asthe implications on the sector due to reallocation affects are fairly small.
