N.W.T. peatlands store 24 billion tonnes of carbon and are worth protecting, experts say

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. This story is the second in a series, by CBC North, that examines carbon storage with the N.W.T.'s natural environment. It's also part of a CBC News initiative entitled Our Changing Planet to show and explain the effects of climate change and what is being done about it.

The N.W.T. is home to nearly one-fifth of Canada's peatlands, according to a researcher who says they're an asset worth protecting in the fight against climate change because of their capacity to store carbon. 

Lorna Harris, a postdoctoral fellow and ecosystem scientist at the University of Alberta, said peatlands cover about 230,000 square kilometres of land in the N.W.T., and they store 24 billion tonnes of carbon. That's the carbon equivalent of using nearly 200 billion barrels of oil.

"It is a large portion in the N.W.T., relative to some other provinces," she said, noting that the Mackenzie River basin, stretching from northern Alberta to the N.W.T., is the second largest expanse of peatland in Canada next to the Hudson Bay Lowlands. 

Peatlands are wetland ecosystems filled with organic matter that has collected over thousands of years. They are a type of carbon sink, because through the decaying process, that matter deposits carbon into the surrounding soil and peat, rather than releasing it into the atmosphere.

Peatlands cover swaths of temperate, boreal and subarctic regions and can be found in forests and in permafrost too.

A World Wildlife Fund-Canada (WWF) study unveiled at the Conference of the Parties (COP26) said Canada stores more than a quarter of the world's soil carbon, and suggests keeping that carbon in the ground — so it doesn't further exacerbates global warming — is key to the country's climate efforts. 

Harris, the lead author of a separate study published recently in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, concludes the biggest threats to northern peatlands are human activities like mining, logging and agriculture, as well as wildfire and permafrost thaw. 

Steven Nitah, a senior advisor to the Indigenous Leadership Initiative and one of lead negotiators in the establishment of the Thaidene Nëné Indigenous Protected Area, said parts of the N.W.T., like its peatlands, are "globally significant" and "provide a nature service that's definitely required to give us a fighting chance" in the face of climate change. 

He said the first thing that needs to be done is to identify those important areas and to work across levels of government — Indigenous, territorial and federal — to protect and manage them. 

The federal government has committed to protecting or conserving 25 per cent of Canada's land by 2025 and working toward protecting 30 per cent by 2030, as part of the country's efforts to fight climate change and defend vulnerable species and ecosystems. 

Nitah said Canada has protected about 15 per cent of its land so far. 

"To double that protection, they [the federal government] need to conserve or protect the quantum land roughly the size of Manitoba," he said, pointing out an opportunity for the N.W.T. to advocate that its lands be protected. 

Nitah said the N.W.T. can continue to demonstrate itself as a leader in Indigenous land protection and management by identifying the right areas for protection as the federal government works toward that goal.