Professor Hans Joosten:

I fully agree with that. I always say necessity is the mother of invention. We might not be able to do it now but it is necessary to do it. When it was decided to bring a man to the moon, there were no ideas as to how to manage it. However, it was managed, in less than ten years. I see enormous progress with respect to the development of innovative land use on crops on rewetted peatlands. That is indeed possible.

On whether it is possible to regrow a peatland, I have come from a peatland where peat extraction was taking place. As a young man, I studied the regeneration of peat in peat pits after peat extraction and the question of how rapidly new peat is formed. Actually, I invented the word "paludiculture" to describe the cultivation of peat. When we studied it, I noticed that much biomass is lost during peat formation. In the end, only 10% of the primary production material is left as peat. We therefore said that if you want to grow peat, you must harvest it as young as possible. Then we concluded that the youngest peat is actually living peat moss. That is the start of peat moss production. Farmed peat moss is an alternative to peat as it has the same properties.

This is also the future in respect of the forestry issue we discussed. We can produce biomass much faster by using annual plants and annual cropping, and we can make reeds into materials that are as strong as wood. The technical possibilities exist. We have to think outside current frameworks. We must return to short rotation crops because they are much more effective for what I describe. There are good possibilities for peatlands.