Venice agreement for peatlands
The Venice Agreement represents a declaration of commitment by peatland custodians, scientists and artists together with representatives of indigenous communities, climate policy, nature conservation and economy from around the world to focus on and protect the ecological and cultural significance of these special ecosystems. It takes a bottom-up approach that recognises local initiatives as important actors in the international process of peatland conservation. The Venice Agreement recognises that the well-being of people and peatlands are intimately linked and that thoughtful, responsible and accountable action can protect and restore this unique relationship for generations to come.
Related Projects
Peatlands are ancestors, are memory, are futures. WETBEINGS gathers “old stories and new ones that can be medicine for our broken relationship with earth” (R. W. Kimmerer) from the biodiverse organism and troubled ecosystem of the Aukštumala peatland. The transdisciplinary program roots itself in this 9000 years old living archive in the delta of the Nemunas river at the Baltic coast and one of the largest peat extraction sites in the Baltics.
One of the earliest modern scientific studies on a peatland, Carl Albert Weber’s study of the Aukštumala peatland in Lithuania, published in 1902, is a starting point to critically interrogate the relationships of science and the utilisation, productivization, destruction and protection of peatlands across times and ideologies, and to activate diverse and wet perspectives on peatland ecologies, knowledges, cultures and economies.
WETBEINGS invites peatland beings, storytellers, scientists, artists, researchers and neighbors to listen deeply to the voices of water, moss, and memory. Over three days, participants engage in workshops, excursions, talks, performances, and ceremonies exploring the bog’s deep time and ecological memory, practices of environmental and cultural restoration, and the wet ecosystem’s social significance.
