Wooded peatland in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

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Wooded peatland in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

The case study region is located in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, North-Eastern Germany – a rural, agricultural, and comparatively remote landscape between the two lakes Malchiner See and Kummerower See. Peatland is the predominant soil type in this area, especially along the lake shores. Over the last 200 years, the land has been extensively engineered with drainage ditches, canals, dykes, pumping systems, and river straightening to convert once unusable wetlands into agriculturally productive meadows. Peat was historically extracted for fuel and used by local sugar beet refineries, leaving behind rectangular ponds that remain part of the current landscape. Today, the area is part of a natural landscapes park, a German conservation designation focusing on information and coordination. Satellite imagery clearly shows how drainage ditches and adjacent dykes separate drained agricultural meadows from still-wet peatlands near the river Peene.

  • Only about 10% of the 300,000 hectares of peatlands in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania remain wet, as most of the land has been drained for agricultural use. This drainage leads to the oxidation of organic carbon in the soil, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions that exceed those of the entire German industrial sector.
  • Despite a general consensus on the importance of rewetting drained peatlands, practical progress has been slow. In the case study region, only two out of more than 30 farmers have started experimenting with paludiculture - agriculture adapted to rewetted peat soils.
  • Farmers face several disincentives, including inappropriate subsidy structures, prior investments that lock them into current practices, uncertainty about necessary changes in farming technologies, and a lack of established value chains for new biomass products.
  • Rewetting also poses coordination challenges at the landscape scale, as water does not follow property boundaries. Successful rewetting requires cooperation between a wide range of landowners and land users. In addition, agricultural land often competes with other land use priorities such as housing, infrastructure and renewable energy, making land use decisions more complex. Effective mediation between conflicting interests is often lacking.
  • Rewetting peatlands offers immediate climate benefits, including large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, regional cooling, improved biodiversity, improved surface water quality and flood control - all with relatively low technological risk.
  • Reversing drainage and developing paludiculture could create new, sustainable agricultural models that support both rural livelihoods and environmental restoration.
  • The designation of the area as a Natural Landscape Park provides a basis for information sharing and coordinated action that could support long-term ecological change.

This case study explores the interplay between individual and collective incentives and disincentives for rewetting drained peatlands near Malchin. The methodological approach and research questions will be co-designed with regional stakeholders to better understand and address socio-economic and environmental trade-offs.

The main partner in this pilot project is Wasserwerk der Zukunft e.V., a local NGO founded by the regional public water utility. The project aims to identify realistic pathways for peatland rewetting that are both climate-effective and socially acceptable, while aligning land use with broader ecological goals.