European countries bordering Russia have tightened security since 2022. Finland has finished the first section of a wall along its 1,340-kilometer frontier and is tracking increased Russian troop movements.
This summer, Poland laid protective minefields over a 20-kilometer stretch bordering Russia and Belarus under its “East Shield” infrastructure program.
Now both NATO members are turning to wetlands. Peat bogs—spongy, waterlogged ground common in northern climates—are largely impenetrable to tanks.
Finland’s defense and environment ministries will begin talks in autumn on a peatland repair pilot, a working-group member told Politico.
In Poland, the defense ministry favors restoring wetlands along the eastern border, with discussions under way among scientists and the defense and environment ministries.
“Nature is an ally, and we want to use it,” said Cezary Tomczyk, a state secretary at Poland’s defense ministry, in comments to Politico.
Germany’s Greifswald Mire Centre in June urged the EU to create a fund of up to €500 million to plan and re-wet 100,000 hectares.
“Naturally wet and equally re-wetted peatlands are impassable for tanks, slowing down troop movements and forcing predictable corridors that are easier to defend,” it said, adding that peatlands can shield transport routes and energy facilities by hindering troop movements.
Ukraine offered an early example: in March 2022 its forces destroyed the Kozarovychi Dam, flooding 2,800 hectares and slowing Russian advances toward Kyiv.
The flooding also caused damage, including in residential areas, and likely released pollutants such as sewage and heavy metals, along with invasive species from fish farms.
Rapid re-wetting “just ends up with a lake […] and not necessarily with all the biodiversity that you might envisage,” said Mark van der Wal of the IUCN’s Dutch branch. To maximize ecological gains, “it needs to be done carefully and it may take a while,” added the IUCN’s Caspar Verwer. “It’s not just a matter of opening the gate […] and you have your healthy peatland.”
Peatlands store vast amounts of carbon when wet, but drained peat becomes a carbon source.
In Finland, “one third of the country is peatland, but we have drained half of this area,” said Kristiina Lang of the Natural Resources Institute of Finland. Drained peatland, 10% of Finland’s agricultural land, produces more than half of the sector’s greenhouse-gas emissions, she said.
Across Europe, nearly half of peatlands are degraded, and drained peatlands account for about 7% of the EU’s annual emissions.
EU restoration laws require countries to restore at least 30% of drained peatlands by 2030, and 50% by 2025; the European Parliament calls peatland restoration one of the most cost-effective ways to cut farm-sector emissions.
Finland sees obvious re-wetting candidates—forestry areas that failed to grow trees—potentially near the eastern border, Lang said. Elsewhere, private ownership and profitable forests or farms could complicate conversion.
The Baltic states have no current plans to re-wet peat as a defense measure, said Māris Andžāns of the Center for Geopolitical Studies Riga, citing more immediate threats such as hybrid warfare at sea and the aerial risk of drones.
“No Baltic state has long range air defense systems,” he said. “The sky is a big hole in our defense.”
He cautioned that focusing too much on ground invasion could miss “more likely scenarios.”
(jh)
Source: France24, Politico