Climate Change Working Group: The next big exercise for IPS

摘要

More than one year ago, on 20 February 2005, the IPS Executive Board held a sauna meeting aboard a ferry on the Baltic Sea. There was only one item on the agenda. What next after the Wise Use Guidebook, an exercise of several years between the International Peat Society and the IMCG, the International Mire Conservation Group. After the second round in the steam room, a topic emerged, not a new one but the highly important, debatable and timely current issue of Peatlands and Climate Change. The topic was then discussed thoroughly within the recently established Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of IPS at its second meeting in Warsaw, Poland. Having accepted the topic unanimously, SAB was asked to draft terms of reference for an Expert Group to be invited to develop the idea and work out an action plan for dealing with the complex issue of Peatlands and Climate Change. Each of the eight IPS Commissions then nominated a representative for the Expert Group in order to incorporate expertise from different sub areas and viewpoints. On the first day of February 2006, 16 invited experts assembled in the House of Estates in a pretty cold Helsinki, where there was no sign of global warming.