Restoring organic soils under agriculture: cost-effective portfolios in the context of European climate and biodiversity policies

Organic soils contain nearly one-third of the world’s soil carbon, despite covering only 3-4% of the global land surface. Their degradation releases large quantities of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and reduces ecosystem functions, including biodiversity support. The European Union (EU) is the second-largest global emitter of GHGs from drained organic soils after Indonesia. Although organic soils under agricultural use represent only about 2% of the EU’s total agricultural area, they are responsible for approximately 80% of Cropland and Grassland emissions released to the atmosphere. Restoring drained organic soils therefore represents a significant opportunity for achieving climate change mitigation targets in the EU. However, the economic mitigation potential of organic soil restoration remains insufficiently explored, as existing studies do not consider restoration beyond full rewetting and rarely assess potential synergies with economic incentives and restoration targets. In this study, we apply GLOBIOM-EU, an economic land-use model, to comprehensively assess the economic climate mitigation potential from restoring drained organic soils used for agriculture considering multiple restoration measures: full rewetting, rehabilitation, and paludiculture. Our results indicate that under a GHG price of 100 EUR per tCO2 equivalent (EUR tCO2e-1), 38.2-44.4 MtCO2 equivalent per year (MtCO2e yr-1) could be mitigated in 2050. Paludiculture emerges as a promising option, substantially increasing the attractiveness of rewetting organic soils; under conditions of high demand for paludiculture products, 2 million hectares of drained organic soils could be restored without additional climate mitigation incentives, delivering mitigation of approximately 17 MtCO2e yr-1 by 2050. Moreover, meeting the 2050 targets of the EU Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) alone could mitigate 23-29% of current emissions from drained agricultural organic soils in the EU. Overall, our findings suggest that the greatest climate benefits would be achieved through the combination of restoration measures that balance mitigation potential, economic viability, and land-use competition under different policy and market conditions, while also enabling opportunities for biodiversity co-benefits. This highlights the importance of integrated policy frameworks that align climate mitigation, ecosystem restoration, and market incentives.