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Abstract
Roughly 6.5% of the German utilized agricultural area is located on organic soils (fens
and bogs). Nevertheless, the drainage of these areas in order to allow their agricultural
utilization causes roughly a third of the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of the German
agricultural sector, being equivalent to 4% of the total German GHG emissions.
Obviously, German policies trying to reduce the GHG emissions successfully must tackle
this issue. The abandonment of the cultivation of organic soils would be an effective
policy to reduce the GHG emissions however the question remains whether it is an
efficient measure compared with the other options?
In the paper we assess the mitigation costs on the basis of the standard gross margin and
tenure of the agriculturally used peatlands and with the results obtained from sector
model RAUMIS. Without engineering and transaction costs the mitigation costs are in the
magnitude of 10 to 45 € per to of CO2eq. This makes rewetting of peatlands at least in the
medium and long run a fairly efficient options for reducing GHG emissions, especially as
the implications on the sector due to reallocation affects are fairly small.