The Peatland Standard for Ireland
Helping generate funding for peatland restoration
Urgent action is needed to restore Ireland’s degraded bogs.
Responsible private finance can provide a flow of money that is needed to restore peatlands locally.
Peatland Finance Ireland aims to direct this flow of money to restoration projects by producing and facilitating the sale of verified nature certificates with the Peatland Standard for Ireland.
Peatlands have amazing carbon-capturing capabilities and are the most effective natural climate solution in the temperate world. Healthy peatlands have many other benefits, including for biodiversity, flood management, water quality, and as places of cultural and archaeological heritage that provide space for recreation and wellbeing.
Ireland is home to a major portion of Europe’s peatlands, but many of these are degraded and so their benefits are reduced or lost. Most of the funding for restoration in Ireland to date has come from government or European grants. There is simply not enough public money to cover the full cost of restoring Ireland’s peatlands, nor would it be fair to use public money in this way.
The Peatland Standard for Ireland provides a process to measure the improvements that come from peatland restoration. This allows projects to access essential funding for restoration, and investors to ensure that the benefits they’re funding are true and accurate.
Pilot Phase and Further Development
Peatland Finance Ireland, a not-for-profit CLG dedicated to accelerating peatland restoration in Ireland, has developed V1.0 of the Peatland Standard. Funded by both state and corporate sources, it brings together stakeholders from government, semi-state bodies, and local communities. In 2025, pilot projects will test the concept, attract investment, establish reference sites for future initiatives, and support the ongoing development of the Standard and its processes. Ecosystem quantification methodologies are expected to evolve in the short to medium term, particularly by streamlining biodiversity and water services assessments through ongoing research and improved modelling, aligning with the results-based scorecard system.
Download the Peatland Standard for Ireland V1.0.
Download the one-page summary of the Peatland Standard.
Download the summary of the Peatland standard and ecosystem certificates.
Download the process summary document.
For the other Peatland Standard documents, calculators and to learn more, click on the relevant link below.
Acknowledgements
The Peatland Standard has been strongly influenced by the UK Peatland Code, Valuta voor Veen and Moorfutures. The Standard is indebted to assistance from the IUCN UK and with kind permission of the National Trust for Scotland, many of the project plan templates have been based on the UK Peatland Code. The Peatland Standard has embraced the wide range of peatland types and land use changes in Ireland and has been enabled by the open and generous peatland research community. This has allowed development to focus on wider ecosystem services and benefits as well as emission reductions. The Peatland Standard uses the international Core Carbon Principles (CCP) as set by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) and the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI) for the supply and use of credits.
