Towards development of a UK peatland indicator framework

1. Joint Nature Conservation Committee The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) is the statutory adviser to the UK Government and devolved administrations on UK and international nature conservation Our role is to provide scientific evidence, information, and advice to inform decisions to protect the natural environment. Our specific role is to work on nature conservation issues that affect the UK as a whole and internationally, by: • advising Government on the development and implementation of policies for, or affecting, nature conservation in the UK and internationally; • providing advice and disseminating knowledge on nature conservation issues affecting the UK and internationally; • establishing common standards throughout the UK for nature conservation, including monitoring, research, and the analysis of results; and • commissioning or supporting research which it deems relevant to these functions. Background to JNCC can be found on JNCC's website at: https://jncc.gov.uk/about-jncc/ 2. Project Aims To develop conceptual models describing the variables affecting wildfire risk, flood risk, water quality and/or water provisioning in and downstream from peatland. 3. Project Background When in good condition, peatlands are important for delivering a wide range of benefits to society, such as carbon storage and reduced emissions, wildfire regulation, flood regulation, water quality regulation, and water provision - Whilst a national indicator of peatland carbon balance already exists, within the UK Greenhouse Gas Inventory, similar national scale data are not currently available for the other benefits that peatlands provide. In order to ultimately reach the stage of developing additional indicators focused on societal outcomes, the first step is to gain a thorough understanding from the literature of the known variables affecting that benefit and develop a conceptual model - as specified within this invitation to tender. The eventual existence of such indicators would allow for: • more effective business cases to be made by those seeking funding for peatland conservation and restoration activities • more informed decisions to be made by funders, and stronger justification for decisions they make around public spending • a clear and relatable way to communicate the importance of peat to non-specialists, such as ministers and the general public • tracking of progress through time, for example against each of the four UK countries' Peatland Strategies • policymakers to design more effective policies through an improved understanding of the pressures and drivers that are affecting the indicator results • depending on the format of the final model, potentially spatial prioritisation, prediction of the output of any given policy, and an understanding of any trade-offs and potential for perverse incentives from a given policy. Stakeholder engagement across the four UK countries has identified a need for a UK peatland indicator framework, and several potential indicators were selected as priorities - four of which (wildfire risk, flood risk, water quality, and water provisioning) JNCC wish to let an initial research phase on. JNCC have already undertaken a short scoping exercise on the feasibility of a range of potential peatland indicators, the outputs of which will be shared with the successful contractor as a starting point. For the purposes of this project, we use the term 'indicator' in its broadest sense; anything that gives an indicative metric of change through time, whether that is measured or modelled, and whether that is related to a driver, a pressure, a state, an impact or a response; with modelled impact indicators being the specific direction within this that we wish to take forward. We are however focusing on indicators relevant to a national scale - whether producing a national total or a national map - rather than indicators that are designed to be used in an individual project on a very small scale, for …