Joanna Tantanasi

B.Sc. Oceanography – University of the Aegean, Greece.

M.Sc. Environmental Governance – School of Environment and Development, The University of Manchester.

Adaptive governance for carbon sequestration: The case of the peatlands in the Peak District National Park.

Supervisors: James Evans and Clive Agnew.

Environmental Policy, Environmental Management and Governance, Climate Change, Socio-ecological systems, theory of Resilience, adaptation, Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), Carbon emissions (storage and sequestration), Carbon politics, Philosophy of Nature.

Adaptive governance is a concept from institutional theory that has recently emerged from the interaction of the application of ecological systems theory to natural resource management and the study of self-governing institutions to manage common pool resources. The peat ecosystem of the Peak District National Park (PDNP) provides an excellent case that demonstrates the dynamic intersection of ecological and social disciplinary perspectives advocated by adaptive governance. Peatlands attribute their increasing ecological importance to climate change mitigation through maintaining the carbon budgets at equilibrium. The peatlands of the PDNP, and of the UK respectively, hold a critical position among the Northern hemisphere peatlands as they are located in the most southern position and therefore will act as an early alarm system for the effects of climate change on these ecosystems. Moreover, policy frameworks address peatlands as forests and thus fail to recognise their special socio-ecologic characteristics, which are critical in determining whether they behave as carbon sinks or carbon sources. Furthermore, research and natural resource management policies in the past two decades have focused primarily on the promotion of ecosystem services such as clean water, the reduction of soil erosion and the conservation of biodiversity. Hence, as carbon budgets become critical, new forms of governance are required to ensure socio-ecological systems deliver the most important ecosystem services.

Consequently the main research questions of this project are:

1. How does carbon inform policy agendas and governance respectively at a local, regional and national scale and vice versa?
   
2. How can adaptive management be implemented in the peatlands at the Dark Peak area of the PDNP in order to make this particular SES increase its carbon sequestrating capacity and more resilient to disturbances (human and natural)?
3. How does adaptive governance deal with cross-scalar complexities and conflicts between actors within the peat-governance network?