The EU aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by at least 55% by 2030. This ambition requires fast mitigation measures within all sectors. Paludiculture is the productive land use of wet and rewetted peatlands and can reduce GHG emissions by up to 70-80%. It thus has a large potential to support the EU’s climate targets and biodiversity strategy and still provide farmers and landowners with income, but only if the practice is scaled up. Currently, there are too few large-scale sites involving local actors that demonstrate industrial scale paludiculture farming models. PaluWise's 4 large-scale paludiculture sites in Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom will showcase best practices and solutions for converting degraded organic soils to paludiculture. They develop field-scale operations and their associated five value chains (crops: Downy Birch, Reed, Sedges, Typha, Reed Canary Grass). By having two established (NL, UK) and two new sites (FI, PL), PaluWise can demonstrate different stages of paludiculture and associated value chains, emphasising replicability and scalability. Network sites (e.g., PaludiZentrale, Germany) will provide lessons learnt guidance and engage actors in innovating improvements (e.g. maintaining high water levels, adapting machinery, choosing suitable crop species). A multi-actor approach is applied to co-innovate and improve cost-effective, climate smart value chains. Activities cover the full sequence from deciding where to set up a site (WP1 decision support tool for rewettability), what works well in a site (WP2 demos), what are the benefits/impacts in emission reduction, carbon sequestration potential, biodiversity and other ecosystem services at landscape scale (WP3, WP4), and how to upscale and get support (WP5). We will identify barriers and provide recommendations to boost improved policy and legislation for large-scale deployment of paludiculture in Europe.

PALUS DEMOS will establish 3 large scale paludiculture demonstration sites to provide insights in new agricultural business models, increased employment, and improved biodiversity and water quality in line with the objectives of the EU Green Deal. PALUS DEMOS will inspire entrepreneurs in agriculture, biobased manufacturing industry, communities, politicians, water and nature organisations and many others, that paludiculture will provide a new direction to preserve peat pastures, carbon stores and reduce GHG emissions. The proposed bottom-up approach (agriculture feeds science) is an opportunity that can improve social, economic and environmental sustainability, offering a future-proof model for agricultural entrepreneurs. Our demonstrators will act as lighthouses or beacons for local stakeholders and others from right across Europe & beyond. The focus of these demonstrators, supported by many of Europe’s leading experts, is to develop a range of best practices and land uses in strategic locations in three European countries ideally placed to spearhead the establishment of paludiculture practice and markets across Europe in a climate smart farming way. Beyond state of the art, we will establish co-created sustainable paludiculture practices at each of the three demonstrators. This will be fully supported by policy recommendations identifying enablers, barriers and policy gaps. We will work with stakeholders to develop (socio-)economic models using the quadruple helix innovation system, including government, industry, academia, and society. Our work will be supported by the development of long term business plans, it will include end users of the produced biomass and will be supported by Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools co-created with stakeholders leading us towards an evidence based policy approach to paludiculture innovation.