The Goldman Environmental Prize Committee has chosen Finnish researcher Tero Mustonen as one of the winners of its 2023 Prize for his "outstanding environmental achievement in Europe."
Since 1989, the Goldman Committee has been annually selecting six grassroots climate heroes - one from each inhabited continental region - to honour their "extraordinary actions to protect our planet." The prize, often referred to as the Green Nobel, is worth 200,000 US dollars.
Mustonen is a fisherman and co-founder of the Snowchange Cooperative, and impressing the committee with his efforts at peatland restoration and rewilding projects.
In a video produced by the Goldman Committee highlighting Mustonen's work, he noted the importance of peatlands in Finland's stated goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2035.
"We discovered the immense capacity of peatlands to be able to store our waters. They are keeping carbon on the ground, and they are drawing down CO2 from the atmosphere in massive quantities," Mustonen said.
Since 2018, Mustonen has led the restoration of 62 peatlands, totalling some 35,000 hectares, that had been severely degraded by industrial peat mining and logging.
Finland began burning peat for energy and extensively cutting down its old forests for timber after WWII. In recent years, peat burning has been found to be a more polluting energy source than coal.
"I grew up seeing how our peat mining destroyed our landscapes and all of this biodiversity was lost," Mustonen said of his decision to get involved in peatland protection and restoration.
Peatlands are crucial in tackling the climate crisis as they function as natural carbon sinks while also preserving biodiversity and preventing flooding. A report pubished last year found Finland's land is now a source of carbon emissions due to increased logging and slower tree growth.
Damaged peatlands can in turn become carbon emitters as degradation and overexploitation can cause significant amounts of greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere.
A recent study by Finland's wildlife agency Metsähallitus found that roughly a third of Northern Lapland's peatlands have disappeared since the 1990s. The natural resource management enterprise said that Northern Lapland could already be turning into a damaged peatland area.
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