Precious Peatlands: Stories from Germany

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Jun 30, 2025

For this issue of the Bog Standard, we will continue our slow submersion into peatlands across Europe, this time with a visit (in the form of three interviews) to the peatlands of Germany!

Like most peatlands across Europe, Germany’s peatlands have a long history of being altered by human intervention. Germany was once a very bog-rich country with peatlands covering an area roughly the size of Saxony!

Once sprawling, largely impenetrable and sometimes containing peat up to eight meters thick, peatlands now cover only approximately 3.5% of Germany’s land area. Best estimates suggest that up to 92-96% of German peatlands are currently drained, with approximately 86% used for agriculture and approximately 10% used for forestry.

To unknowing eyes, most of this land is not even recognizable as former peatlands. And despite their utility, it is these drained and damaged peatlands that alone account for 7% of Germany’s national greenhouse gas emissions. But how did we get here?

Although wide-spread drainage began in the 18th century, it is documented that Cistercian monks participated in annual small-scale drainage activities as early as the 13th century! But drainage ramped up and became a large-scale project in the 18th century under Prussian King Friedrich II, when orders for peatland cultivation colonized many of these ecosystems, due to a scarcity of wood, and in an attempt to make the land “usable”.

Drainage ramped up once again in the 19th century, due to the proliferation of more technical approaches, exported by Dutch experts in peatland management – management that we might more accurately call drainage or destruction.

And finally, the history of German peatland drainage reached its most dramatic stage after World War II, when all available land was put to use, and extremely intensive drainage measures were put into place to allow large scale farming on peatlands, taking place mostly in the 1960’s.

This brings us to our present moment, where in some areas with long agricultural histories, such as the northeast German state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, along the Baltic coast, drained peatlands make up 40% of total greenhouse gas emissions for the region.

Yet despite this storied past, and the state of contemporary widespread drainage, things are shifting in the German story of peatland relations, thanks to creative strategies for land reclamation and wide-spread paludiculture attempts. Because many of the peatlands in Germany that are potentially re-wettable are already used for agriculture, paludiculture offers a viable solution for retaining the agricultural use value of peatlands, while also improving the health of these ecosystems for all. Paludiculture allows farmers to continue to use the land for agricultural purposes, even as the land is re-wet, so emissions are lowered and agricultural sacrifices are minimized.

Aside from paludiculture strategies, Germany is also a worldwide leader in making land swap deals with stakeholding farmers. For instance, in these same areas near the Baltic coast with drained peatlands that invisibly emit enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, farmers are being encouraged to re-wet their former peatlands, receiving compensation in the form of access to public lands elsewhere. It is estimated that with these schemes and with the cooperation of farmers, local governments have been able to re-wet about 5,000 acres of peatlands per year. This is a fantastic step in the right direction, especially considering that changing relationships to peatlands is absolutely necessary if Germany is going to meet its goal of cutting net greenhouse gas emissions to zero before 2050.

Yet, 5,000 acres a year may not be enough. Franziska Tanneberger, director of the Greifswald Mire Centre estimates that to meet this goal, Germany would have to re-wet more than 100,000 acres of peatland per year. Nevertheless, we remain encouraged by the varied and creative strategies that Germany is attempting in order to change national relations with these indispensable ecosystems.

With this brief overview, we will turn to our interviews to hear someFor this issue of the Bog Standard, we will continue our slow submersion into peatlands across Europe, this time with a visit (in the form of three interviews) to the peatlands of Germany!

With this brief overview, we will turn to our interviews to hear some personal stories rooted deep within the German peat.

LaÏsa Cordes:

To start off, could you introduce yourself and share a bit about your background? Especiallyhow your connection to German peatlands began? Was there a moment, memory, or project that really sparked your interest?

Hi, my name is Laisa. I’m from Germany, but my master's studies brought me to Italy, where I’ve been living for the past two years. My background is in design, and I just completed my master's in Eco-Social Design here in Bolzano, South Tyrol. Ok, so It’s always a bit tricky to explain exactly what eco-social design is, but basically, we focus on social or ecological issues and use design more as a tool, to visualize important topics, raise awareness, or bring people together. Projects in eco-social design are often interdisciplinary and start with a long research phase. The design outcome can really be anything — an exhibition, a video, a product, a workshop, a platform — whatever fits the findings from the research. This master’s program also connected me more deeply with the topic of peatlands. But actually, there was an earlier experience with this magical landscape that came back to me when I started thinking about my thesis topic — and that was in Germany.

About four years ago, a friend of mine approached me about a project. It was a collaboration with a photographer who was publishing a book on German peatlands. My friend was designing and doing the layout for the book, while I added some illustrations. I learned a lot about the fascinating inhabitants of this ecosystem I was drawing. After the book was printed and published, I felt more connected to the landscape and I was curious to meet its inhabitants in real life. So my friend and I went on a trip together. We visited a raised bog in Niedersachsen, walked for hours on a small path, watched birds through binoculars, took pictures of vegetation we recognized, and listened to the silence of the area. When we had reached about the center of the area, suddenly a huge brown surface opened up in front of us — this was the first time I saw a peat mining site.

After discovering this deep bond with the landscape, I felt shocked and confused. In the bookwith its beautiful images, peatlands were depicted as romantic landscapes. Of course, I knewabout the extraction of peat but I had no idea how that actually looked. That moment really stuck with me and definitely affected me.

How would you describe your relationship with peatlands today, both personally and professionally? What kind of work do you do with or for peatlands, and how does that relate to your role as an eco-social designer?

My relationship with peatlands has deepened a lot over the past few years. And honestly, it’s hard to separate the personal from the professional. They’ve influenced each other a lot. After over a year of research, I’d say I feel a strong sense of empathy for this landscape. I’m also really enthusiastic about it and I keep seeing connections everywhere. I’ve heard the same thing from others working on the topic. I found this interesting, because peatlands are quite inaccessible for humans. So how do you build a relationship with something you can’t easily access? For me, there was always a lot of curiosity. Of course, to do a project on peatlands, I first needed to understand the ecosystem. Now I feel like I do understand a lot, but I’m still curious. There are still so many open questions, and it feels like learning about peatlands is an endless process. So what do I actually do as an eco-social designer? For my thesis, I worked very locally on the issue of peat extraction in this region. There’s a nearby valley that used to be entirely covered by peatlands in the past, but it was drained, and a lot of peat has been extracted — and still is today.

I discovered this and after visiting different peatland areas, I started interviewing many people. What I found was a tense conflict between environmentalists, extraction companies, farmers, politicians, activists, and residents. The discussion wasn’t just about the past and present, but there were also insecurities about the future. Since peat extraction is expected to be banned soon, the question arose: what should be done with these lands, especially former extraction sites or areas that still contain peat soil?

While interviewing different stakeholders, I started using design as a tool to support dialogue. I visualized maps, created a booklet, illustrated an animation, and designed future scenarios — all based on what I learned in the interviews. It was an interesting process because, as a designer, I was perceived as relatively neutral and unbiased, which helped me speak with very different people. I was sort of in the middle, collecting knowledge and perspectives.

But I didn’t want to keep that knowledge to myself. I wanted to share it and spark more dialogue. So in the end, I created an exhibition in a nearby village, close to peat extraction areas. It was a participatory exhibition so people could interact with the materials, write their thoughts, add their own future scenarios, and join workshops to discuss ideas. Many people from different backgrounds participated. At the end of the project, I wrote and designed a report that was shared with all participants, institutions, and stakeholders. I hope that in this way the dialogue on this important topic for the region continues.

You're originally from Germany but now based in Italy. Has this shift in landscape and culture influenced how you think about design, ecology, or activism?

Yes, definitely. I noticed a huge difference between Germany and Italy when it comes to peatlands. In Germany, public awareness of the importance of peatlands is much more developed. But in Italy, there’s a real lack of education. Most people here don’t know what peat is, where it comes from, or that there are alternatives — which also aren’t easily available here. That makes it even more necessary to start projects that address overlooked topics like this. But beyond that, living here and being part of this master’s program has really influenced the way I think. Design isn’t always comfortable — especially when you're working on tense or controversial topics. I had to experience that myself. And it’s not just about “designing” something. There are so many roles that come with these kinds of projects. In the end, I often felt more like a mediator, and that’s not an easy role. I also experienced a strong connection between design, ecology, and activism. I don’t see them as separate, but as interconnected, and the impact is much bigger when they work together. Fortunately, I received a lot of support from environmental and activist organizations. And this always kept me going.

Looking ahead, how do you imagine your peatland activism evolving? Are there any hopes, dreams, or projects on the horizon you'd like to share?

There’s definitely still a lot to be done. First of all, I’d love to see design as a discipline being included more often in ecological topics like peatlands! I experienced that visualisations are super helpful to make current challenges and future scenarios tangible and discussable. So I really hope for more collaborations between designers and other disciplines, like scientists — not just for peatlands, but more broadly.

When it comes to peatlands specifically, I’d love to help communicate their impact more on the consumer side. There’s currently a study happening in South Tyrol on alternatives to peat, and I’d really like to help visualize those results and make them accessible. For example, starting a campaign to support garden centers and nurseries in becoming peat-free — and helping customers understand what buying peat actually means, and what alternatives they have. There’s so much educational work needed here. I think design can help here. Beyond the practical design work, I also discovered my interest in writing, especially about the role of design in shaping the future of peatlands and supporting eco-social transformation.

So right now, I’m working on an academic paper with my thesis supervisors. And finally, I just wish to exchange and connect more with others — with people, projects, and regions. It’s amazing how much we can inspire one another and spread more peatland enthusiasm! I’m really happy to be collaborating also with RE-PEAT on an upcoming exhibition in autumn, which will showcase different peatland projects.

Lara-Lane Plambeck

Can you give a brief introduction to yourself, the area in Germany where you are from and how this land shaped your interests in peatlands, and likewise, how peatlands shaped your relationship to your locality?

I am Lara-Lane and have been part of RE-PEAT for some years now. I am a writer, cultural worker, researcher and academic, and social and environmental justice activist or maybe, since I am trying to live a bit more quietly these days, rather a change-worker. I grew up in a small village in northern Germany called Dersau. A place between the North and Baltic Sea, in a slightly hilly landscape that got its shape from the melting of ice masses at the end of the last ice-age. Because of the melting ice, many lakes formed in my area. With the changes in sea levels in addition to the Baltic Sea, the landscape has since been run through with bodies of water, many of which turned into peatlands, mostly fens, throughout time.

I grew up in the countryside in a working class family. I’ve always been a very sensitive being. So, I would say, are my parents. But they never learned how to handle it in healthy relationships. What they did have to pass on as a gift, though, was walking and connecting to the more-than-human world for emotional support. I was extremely in love with my life in this beautiful environment that I grew up in and felt well nourished and loved by it, spending most of my time outside. I also felt strongly connected to the local community growing up. And for this community, but especially for my dad, there was one very important spot to go to – the Uklei lake – a beautiful lake in the middle of the forest bordering the village. Even though Christianity is institutionally present, I’d say this was the real church or holy place I got to know. My dad took me there a lot, chances are high that you meet him there when he isn’t at home, and I go there a lot intentionally, too. He told me many stories there about his childhood and our village’s history sitting by the lake together on one of our walks.

I was never super aware that this was a proper peatland, though, and never thought so much about peatlands. But when I turned toward climate justice activism, peatlands made their theoretical way back into my life and I simultaneously went back to my home landscape because of Covid. When there, I spent so much time outside again, just like in childhood, but with a different kind of awareness. I kept connecting with the Uklei lake again, walking past it daily. And slowly, my spiritual, academic and creative practices all started to align and connect with the peatland that had been in my life since forever. Many developments like my interest in Indigenous studies, my own desire to decolonize myself and my culture, the war in Palestine and my emotional and creative engagement with my surroundings brought me closer to the Uklei lake and with that, to the topic of local peatlands. Researching and connecting to my own heritage turned into researching local peat history. And when asking questions about the Uklei lake, many stories were revealed to me about my ancestors and the local community. Stories about WW2 came to light when I asked people if they knew whether the Uklei was a proper peatland and what it used to look like. It turned into a portal revealing buried secrets of drowned weapons and complicity that I would have otherwise never heard of. And finally, I found living Sphagnum growing on its edges. And I realized that my more-than-human ancestor had survived human destruction. I still pray to a living peatland.

In your research, you explore the concept of Indigenity, can you expand upon this for those of us might not know? How do you understand Indigenity as a western European person committed to decolonizing climate movements, and how did it change your relationship to your home environment?

I got in touch with Indigenous peoples through my work in relation to climate justice activism. The topic of course also comes up in critical and cultural studies and the environmental humanities. And was thus part of different spheres of my work. The issue with Indigeneity is that some people had to fight very hard to get legal recognition as Indigenous peoples, while there is no proper definition of Indigeneity, so there is also always a risk of appropriation of the status. This is why I am trying to be very careful with its usage. Mainly, it is characterized by cultures of place-boundness that stand in opposition to settler-colonialist cultures or nationalities. In such contexts, as in the US also called Turtle Island for example, Indigenous peoples were forcefully eradicated and violently murdered by colonizers from Europe.

Indigenous cultures are tied to the land they have developed from, and have complex societal structures spiritually, culturally, and politically that work in a less oppressive and separatist way than colonizing cultures, honoring balance and integrity also with the more-than-human. Colonialist or Western cultures not only separate people into racial categories related to power but also see the “human” in a Western humanist way, as separate from the environment. Our environment and Indigenous, land-bound people have had to suffer under colonialist rule legitimized by a reduction of them to wilderness, Other, the lesser human. In this way, our environmental and climatological problems and the violence Indigenous peoples have had to endure have the same root causes. Climate and environmental activism can easily reproduce neo-colonialist structures when not making sure that environmental solutions are in integrity with the people living in and from this environment.

In many cases, conservationist measures by Western countries have displaced, killed and expropriated even more land-based people. But these are the people that take care of their environment as opposed to Western people who have caused the imbalances they try to repair with these projects that in the end can easily disrupt the human-nature relationship even more. If we want to truly repair the climate, the environment, we must repair our Western human relationship with it. And this is not done through reinforcing neo-colonialist structures but by being accountable for our crimes, for the wounds we carry and how that has impacted others. If we want to properly repair and decolonize, we have to make sure that we do not impose and manage even more, but give back to those who have been oppressed, listen to Indigenous wisdom and make sure to repair holistically. Only caring about the climate or environment without caring about the people reproduces the very thoughts that have led to many genocides and social oppression and the destruction of the climate and environment. Protecting and working with Indigenous peoples has to be part of climate and environmental activism in my opinion. Just as social justice generally has to be part of climate and environmental justice to truly repair what is broken.

How has this changed my relationship to my home environment?

Well, as a German, I have always been educated to look for fascism and to dig into the past. So I look at my own heritage more critically, generally speaking. Through getting into the topic of Indigeneity more deeply, I at some point realized though, that it does not feel in total alignment to only be thinking about Indigeneity in a theoretical way and from the position of a white person. Indigeneity is about place-boundness. So I decided to return to myself, find the structures of oppression that I want to tackle in myself, in my own heritage and home environment. And because it always felt a bit at the brink of appropriation and extractivism to write academic papers about Indigenous peoples and arts and literature and read Indigenous stories from other places, I wondered if I could reconnect to some kind of local Indigenous wisdom or maybe rather pre- or anti-colonial wisdom as part of the larger healing. I personally never quite felt the allowance to consider my own ancestors as Indigenous. But Indigenous teachers including Rowan White encouraged me to look for Indigenous ancestors in my own history and locality and so I started doing that. Since there are no living Indigenous people in my area and the terminology has often been abused for fascist accounts looking for essentialist Germanic ancestry, I decided to turn away from human ancestors to find possible Indigenous traces and instead, ask my more-than-human ancestors for help which include my local peatlands.

You've written about understanding peatlands as "ancestors" -- can you explain a little about how you came to relate to peatlands as more-than-human ancestors, and how this understanding has shaped the ways you relate to them, and perhaps more broadly, how you relate to place in general?

Looking for possible Indigenous wisdom in my own heritage, I was glad when I found, through Indigenous wisdoms coming from other places, the allowance to take seriously what I have already always felt: that the land and more-than-humans have often felt more like family than humans have. I’ve always felt such a deep emotional, spiritual connection with the world around me and felt so much love coming from landscapes, from the soil holding me, the scents of blossoms making me feel alive and filling my heart with the gift of beauty, the cooling waters of our lakes enwrapping me with lightness. And then, engaging with Indigenous wisdom, I got the allowance to really see them as ancestors that taught us how to be human. To quote Cherokee author and scholar Daniel Heath Justice from the book Why Indigenous Literatures Matter: “we learned to be human in large part from the land and our other-than-human relatives […] and our humanity is enhanced and enriched by actively—and imaginatively—engaging them again and again in respectful relationship” (2018, 76). So, to decolonize and repair the broken relationships that colonialist, imperialist, white-supremacist, patriarchal and capitalist structures have fostered, I decided to turn to my more-than-human ancestors that might carry the wisdom we need for repair. Since peatlands have been here since the last ice-age, they most certainly taught my early ancestors how to be human. And today, having co-developed with and through human interaction, they can still teach me their wisdom and how to be human in our times. Not only do they carry a wisdom inherent to themselves – like the way Sphagnum grows from decay and loss, and how they challenge existing binaries – but they can also maybe help me to recover some of the pre-colonial or Indigenous wisdom of my ancestors as well, as they can, due to their memory-holding capacities, help me trace my ancestry, their relationship to the environment, each other, and perhaps even how to take accountability for past mistakes today. Peatlands, as more-than-human ancestors, can help me recover the good in the past and grow from the ruins toward a better future oriented toward accountability and repair.

Judith Schubert

How old were you when you started developing a relationship with peatlands? How has it evolved over time?

During my studies I took a course in grassland ecology and I got introduced by an enthusiastic professor to the science and fascination of determining grasses. One summer we visited a lot of fields, sat down and determined everything we found around us - it was lovely! She also taught us that many of those fields used to have more wetland species, like sedges, cattails and mosses - because the fields used to be fens! Around 60 percent of the grasslands in the region around Berlin are drained fens, that’s about 180.000 hectares! This knowledge added a new layer to my perception of the landscape that I grew up in.

This sparked my curiosity about how it must have looked like before the ditches, but it also quickly led me to wonder how we can restore those fens while still keeping land that the local farmers can live off?

I decided to learn more about peatlands for my thesis so I reached out to a Swedish scientist and moved to Uppsala. I first did an internship in an environmental research group at the university and then worked there for nearly two years. I measured greenhouse gasses from all kinds of drained peat soils, worked in a forest research station and in the lab. And eventually I also wrote my thesis on the vegetation recovery of an excavated peatland in northern Finland. All this brought me scientifically closer to the fascinating fluctuations in emissions and appearance of peatlands.

Since I joined RE-PEAT I am thinking more about connecting this knowledge with society, through activities, art and conversations. I’ve been a part of RE-PEAT for two and a half years now and I am currently working on the restoration academy project and in the peatland justice project.

I heard you're collecting oral history testimonies from people who live in or around German peatlands, what made you want to do this? What have you found out?

Recently I wondered about a peat pit on a field that is located basically behind my parents house in the outer rims of Berlin. I loved ice skating on those ponds that are actually excavated peat pits and strolling through the fields and forest around them. I wanted to understand who excavated the peat and what it was used for, so I began to reach out to municipalities, archives, universities… but it turned out to be trickier than I thought to find information on this site and to retrace its history. My little side research turned into a riddle and an investigation over time. It didn't work to only browse archives and research on my laptop, the project needed conversations in my old neighbourhood to activate local memories. I am now following the GDR history and its institutions that worked with peatlands and I am meeting older neighbours. It has brought me to narratives around peatlands and socialism that enlighten the history of this peat pit pond.

I am still working on it and hoping to bring it together for the exhibition as part of the RE-PEAT peatland justice project, so better that I don't spoil too much already :))

You are part of the Restoration Academy project, how has this experience enriched your view on peatlands and nature restoration?

The Restoration Academy project is all about bringing youth work and nature restoration together. It sometimes feels like the practice of a win win win win win situation.
Many people are aware that we need to strengthen our relationship to ecosystems and that we need to get restoration work done immediately to prevent more and more crises from happening in terms of climate and ecosystem collapse. The youth is aware but also deeply frustrated and terrified as they face the future. Collective action and a visible and graspable impact can be so empowering!

At the same time nature restoration, especially when it comes to peatlands, needs to happen quickly on a big scale. A lot of hands and knowledge is required. So creating spaces where young people can learn hands-on how to support ecosystems makes a lot of sense!

A big learning opportunity I had during this project is that leaving disrupted ecosystems to themselves for recovery is often not a smart solution. We sometimes need to actively undo intrusive changes humans once made and there is such a thing as a helping human hand and a positive role for humans in natural environments.

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