Bogs, banks and bubble barriers: five great projects to protect nature

Over decades, Israel has invested heavily in the treatment of wastewater, alongside desalination plants, recycling nearly 90% through sewage treatment facilities, which redirect the treated water to irrigation. The sludge byproduct is used as fertiliser and to generate biogas.

In Singapore, five NEWater plants meet up to 40% of the country’s water needs by recycling, according to the national water agency. By 2060, NEWater is expected to meet up to 55% of demand. Its 48km-long deep tunnel sewerage system (DTSS), a used water superhighway, carries used water to reclamation plants to be treated and purified into reclaimed water, or discharged into the sea. When a second phase of the project, currently under way, is completed, pumping stations and conventional water reclamation plants will be phased out, freeing up land.

3. Protecting peatlands

They neither sound glamorous nor hog the limelight, but bogs and peatlands hold one of the keys to combatting the climate crisis. While peatlands cover only 3% of the global land surface, they store nearly 550bn tonnes of carbon – twice as much as in all the world’s forests.

About 10% of the UK is covered in peatland. However, much of this is degraded, and estimates suggest that UK peatlands could be emitting the equivalent of 23m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. Restoring degraded peatlands could stop these emissions and create biodiversity benefits for wildlife, including plants, birds and insects.

The Great North Bog – which includes four national parks, three areas of outstanding natural beauty, and the proposed South Pennines Park – represents about 92% of the upland peat in England and is one of the main UK restoration projects.

The project, led by the North Pennines AONB Partnership, the Yorkshire Peat Partnership and the Moors for the Future Partnership, is aiming to restore nearly 7,000 sq km of upland peat, which store 400m tonnes of carbon. Damaged peat in the Great North Bog currently releases an estimated 4.4m tonnes of carbon annually but project organisers hope that ‘by joining up some of the most successful peatland restoration organisations in Europe we can bring about a massive and urgent step change in saving the majority of England’s upland peatlands before it is too late’.

4. Tackling plastic pollution

Scientists have predicted that in the next 20 years the amount of plastic waste in the oceans is likely to nearly triple in volume, from an estimated 8m tonnes a year today to 29m tonnes by 2040. There is no single solution to the plastic crisis, but scientists, inventors and volunteers across the globe are looking at myriad ways to overcome it.

A team at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University in the US is trying to gather all this information in a ‘plastic pollution prevention and collection technology inventory’. Among the 52 technologies included so far are the Great Bubble Barrier, where ‘tubes placed diagonally across the bottom of the waterway create a bubble barrier by pumping air, creating a current that brings debris to the surface and guides it to a catchment system’; the Holy Turtle, a 1,000ft floating unit which is towed by two marine vessels and captures floating waste; and Stow it, don’t throw it, a youth-driven initiative that recycles tennis ball containers into fishing line recycling bins for anglers.

Zoie Diana, a PhD candidate in the marine science and conservation department at Duke University and one of the team behind the inventory, says they are aiming to add more than 40 new technologies by early next year. ‘We hope that our study and inventory serve as a tool to prevent plastic from entering waterways and collect existing pollution, complementing ongoing efforts to reduce the generation of plastic pollution further upstream in its life cycle.’

5. Dealing with invasive species

At least 107 highly threatened birds, mammals and reptiles are estimated to have benefited from invasive mammal eradication on islands, according to a study published in 2016. ‘Although still few and spatially localised, such cases show that with prompt and appropriate action, it is possible to reduce human-induced extinction rates,’ the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)’s global assessment noted.

New Zealand is at the forefront of this action and has committed to eradicating stoats, possums and rats by the middle of the century under its Predator Free 2050 plan, using a mixture of trapping, hunting, poison and technology. But it is also trialling other projects. A purpose-built predator exclusion fence has been erected to protect 6,000 sq metres of prime habitat for the endangered robust grasshopper, thought to be the world’s first fenced habitat designed for an insect.

The aim of New Zealand’s Predator Free 2050 is to ‘return the voices of the insects, bats, reptiles and birds back to the forests, farmland, towns, cities and coasts’. Currently, 74% of the country’s native terrestrial birds, 84% of its native reptile species and 46% of vascular plant species are threatened with extinction, or at risk of becoming threatened, according to the Department of Conservation. But in the five years since Predator Free 2050 was launched, the numbers of birds such as kea, kākā, kākāriki, the Antipodes snipe and the Tūī have all increased, according to a five-year progress report.

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