Peatlands cover a small share of the world’s land but hold more carbon than all its forests, and drained peat releases it year after year. Agroforestry puts trees back into farmland, where they store carbon and support farmers at the same time. Both are nature-based project types that European buyers increasingly ask about, partly because they also exist close to home.
Peatland credits pay to protect or rewet carbon-rich peat soils; agroforestry credits pay for trees integrated into working farms. This article explains how each earns credits, what the risks are, where Dutch and German schemes fit, and what a buyer should check.
Why peatlands matter
Peat forms over thousands of years in waterlogged soils, where dead plants barely decompose. As long as it stays wet, the carbon stays put. When peat is drained for agriculture, plantations or forestry, oxygen gets in and the peat oxidises, releasing CO2 for decades. Drained peat also burns easily.
The UN’s Global Peatlands Assessment estimates that degraded peatlands emit about 2 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year, roughly 4% of global human-caused emissions (Global Peatlands Initiative). Protecting intact peat and rewetting drained peat are therefore among the most cost-effective climate measures on land.
How peatland carbon credits work
Peatland projects earn credits in two ways:
Protection of intact peat forest that would otherwise be drained or cleared. This is avoidance, similar to REDD+, and relies on a baseline of what would have happened (REDD+ explained).
Rewetting of drained peat by raising water levels, which stops oxidation. This mostly avoids ongoing emissions; as vegetation recovers, some projects also remove CO2.
Measurement combines water-table monitoring, subsidence data, vegetation mapping and emission factors per site type. The main risks are fire, falling water levels in dry years and pressure to drain again, which is why long contracts and buffer contributions matter (permanence and buffer pools).
Tropical example. Katingan Mentaya in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia (Verra VCS 1477, with CCB certification) protects and restores about 150,000 hectares of peat swamp forest that was slated for conversion to plantations. It combines fire prevention, rewetting and community programmes with 39 villages.
Peatland credits close to home
For Dutch and German buyers, peatland is not only a tropical topic. Large areas of peat meadow in the Netherlands and northern Germany were drained for dairy farming and keep emitting.
Netherlands. Under the Stichting Nationale Koolstofmarkt, the Valuta voor Veen method lets farmers raise ditch water levels on peat meadows and sell the avoided emissions as certified credits. Projects take time to set up, and volumes are small.
Germany. MoorFutures, started in 2011 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and now also used in other states, certifies peatland rewetting with contracts of 50 years or more. Credits are usually sold before the reductions happen, to finance the rewetting.
These schemes follow national rules rather than Verra or Gold Standard, so check how they handle permanence, verification and double counting with national inventories before using them for a claim. The EU’s CRCF also covers peatland rewetting as carbon farming (CRCF certified carbon credits).
Tip from Bernard de Wit, Founder of Regreener: “With peatland, ask what happens in a dry summer. A good project monitors the water table continuously and has a plan for when levels drop. Peat that dries out can lose years of avoided emissions in a single fire season.”
How agroforestry carbon credits work
Agroforestry means growing trees together with crops or livestock on the same land: fruit and timber trees between crops, shade trees over coffee or cocoa, or trees on pasture (silvopasture). The trees remove CO2 into wood and roots, and leaf litter builds soil carbon.
Agroforestry credits are removals, usually short-lived in SBTi’s terms because the carbon sits in trees and soils (carbon dioxide removal explained). Their strengths are co-benefits: diversified income for smallholder farmers, better soils, shade and water retention, and habitat (co-benefits).
The quality questions are specific:
Survival and growth of the trees over many years, verified in the field.
Long-term commitment by farmers: what happens if a farmer cuts the trees in year eight?
Benefit sharing: how much of the revenue reaches the farmers who do the work.
Additionality: whether the trees would have been planted anyway for their fruit or timber value.
In Senegal, Regreener works with Veritree on an agroforestry programme in which 6,000 farming families restore land around the Ndankou and Patte forests after decades of peanut monocropping. It is a tree-planting contribution paid per tree, not a carbon credit project. Companies that need removal credits from trees choose certified reforestation instead: SparkOptimus combined a reforestation project in Indonesia with biochar from Ghana.
Which fits your portfolio
Peatland | Agroforestry | |
|---|---|---|
Credit type | mostly avoidance, some removal | removal |
Storage | as long as the peat stays wet | as long as trees and practices are kept |
Main risks | fire, drought, re-drainage, baseline | tree survival, farmer commitment, additionality |
Co-benefits | biodiversity, water, fire prevention | farm income, soils, food security |
Local options for Dutch buyers | Valuta voor Veen, MoorFutures | limited; mostly international |
“Peat and agroforestry show that nature-based projects are not one category. Rewetting a Dutch peat meadow and planting fruit trees in Senegal are both nature-based, but they solve different problems and carry different risks. Buy each for what it does.”
Bernard de Wit, Founder of Regreener
See our peatland and agroforestry projects
From peat swamp protection in Indonesia to tree planting with farming families in Senegal: see what each project delivers and how we assessed it.
