petroleum. in a poker game of power and money the competition is fierce for the world's most important natural resource bluffing and betting checking how long will they be able to play and who will with their story believe that renewable energy will play an important role in the future. of coding the geo political arena stage starting march eighteenth on t.w. . europe needs peat but extracting it has become almost impossible in germany so now the industry is getting its raw material from the baltic states. in london in the old soup of the extraction permit process in germany takes a long time and it's expensive so companies have been forced to look elsewhere.

environmentalists are trying to put a stop to feed extraction experts like and saying it seriously damages the environment and the climate. if you order the ball to peak companies are like the last hunter gatherers they empty one piece of one and then move to the next one. peach sources in western europe have been almost depleted but we still consume vast amounts of it extraction is a highly controversial topic. moderate sparking is managing director of classman deilmann the world market leader in peak extraction and production the company started out as a small factory in one thousand nine hundred thirteen in lower saxony but. peat

stocks in northern germany will be exhausted in a few years' time. it took a long time for classman deilmann to agree to let us film the company was worried that video of pete extraction would be bad for its image. booking says that the peat industry has long since stopped destroying more land that's still intact so they're not damaging the environment. governess in the us in yonder for more than a decade we've been working with our nubile raw materials like wood fiber green waste compost and coconut fibers and they can gradually replace peat even in commercial gardening but how much can be replaced for example today almost ten percent we aim to increase that to fifteen percent over the next two and a half years as the company continues to grow it will increase its use of renewable raw materials. so as not part of the most often. one of those raw

materials is wood specifically would waste which is refined into fibers. this material has an airy quality and we like that in you that the texture is similar to peat so it's allowed to get to the roots of plants and can also hold onto nutrients. right now we're doing research to see whether we can bring the quantity of these materials up to a standard that with come to expect when you. can. live. in northeastern germany he's considered the world's leading expert on more land. knowledge is that the peat industry is looking for substitutes but. other hand i think that some large companies could actually do

a lot more in these are but they've been dragging their feet. through to lose a roof in the order they've come up with proposals that are simply allow peat farming to continue the way it always has moved to coal mining business as usual vital to martin. protecting the more lands also helps to protect the climate more is absorb carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas this more land near the town of on clam is now covered with water again. i live truthfully through the phone that actually happened by accident. broke in one thousand nine hundred five and again in one thousand nine hundred six . the authorities decided it would be cheaper to leave the land flooded than to pump it dry or fix the dikes and build new pumping stations for shuffler. right now the austin is inspecting the site and he's brought along a guest indonesia's ambassador to germany.

before the dikes broke there was a drained more here which was used as farmland. now the swamp land has returned with numerous species of birds and plants many parts of germany used to look like this but over centuries ninety seven percent of the more. environmentalists say that's a record amount. this observation tower provides sweeping views of the more land the indonesian ambassador. grossman know is concerned about the state of drained mors in asia two issues in. the dry mors can easily catch fire and those fires are tough to contain because they also burn underground this is a recent more fire in lower saxony the blaze covered

a huge area similar fires in indonesia have consumed hundreds of thousands of hectares and killed several people the government has set up a separate ministry to deal with the problem. this agency is as possible for doing that inventing it landed in different parts of indonesia has a very ambitious program of preventing two million dollars and so far we have around two hundred thousand dollars so i think we are under right track. pete has to remain in the soil and should be allowed to grow like here in un tom it's good for the climate and the environment and protects against soil erosion but peter extraction continues around the world much of it is used for plant production professional gardener michelle homan is fully aware of this situation home and runs a nursery near the town of ferritin in lower saxony these pots are made of peat

home and grows young plants for organic farms all over northern germany. morals and the amount of moreland is limited so we're planning to reduce our use of pete and that's going to take some time. nish corner. homan has cut peat consumption by thirty percent which won his nursery a green certification peak contains no nutrients and always has the same low ph value so it's perfect for large scale horticulture especially as an alternative to machine based production. this lambs modest could not grow here without peat. in kind of a soggy was all of that you could almost say that it's like most clinic and it

doesn't seem like peter told tall it's just what we need here it's the glue that holds together all the other materials we use the stops the chicks so that we can produce a cube of any size. so some merit really don't have to hold the material together with a plastic pot on. top for them got about most. the young plants first grow in these cubes then they're delivered to other nurseries and planted in soil. peat is key to the production of vegetables no one could accuse nurseries like this one of contributing to the peat extraction problem but consumers want fresh vegetables and that's why peak producers are working to improve their image. that is so on the. developing a report and sustainability and

a few years ago we lost the transparency offensive to make sure that consumers understand our place in the chain and. we want to show them the entire process by which fruits and vegetables get to the market. that. this is should move to a town located on little coast. lithuania like its neighbors latvia and estonia joined the european union in two thousand and four their economies are slowly improving all three baltic states are subject to e.u. environmental standards but each one has different policies on morning. klansmen deilmann was one of the first german companies to start extracting peat in the baltic states for example at the more near. the soviets had

extracted peat in the baltic region for decades now private companies are taking what's left despite klansmen diamonds claims of transparency the company did not allow us to film its operations here. the company's peat extraction site is located near the nature reserve this part of the moore is managed in part by germany's nature and biodiversity conservation association. tom cure shai who works for the group takes a dim view of private companies peat extraction efforts here. the option for german companies say that they'll only work on more that have already been damaged but any kind of peat extraction causes damage or the history of. the nature

reserve had already been drained but not much p.g. had been extracted here conservation groups have filled in more than one thousand ditches to really wet the land but now the birch trees are dying because they are standing in water. to twenty and biologists kindness has been helping to preserve this site for nearly twenty years this area was first described in about one thousand nine hundred by german scientist vega. or. three thousand or three thousand. it was three thousand lower those or two thousand. cut through. one thousand or. nature of the.

tunku shy conducts research at the more and that's not an easy task but i'm becoming gonna try and it looks like we can't get in there are told by this vegetation goes right up to both sides of the trench. we can't go any further it's over have to do it at the front. of the by the british but i'm going to. there's probably still enough pete in the baltic region to last for another one hundred years but consumption is rising especially in asia. here in the baltic states the peak is much and the scale of peat extraction is quite different. right now the baltic countries produce about two million tons of people a year for the european market. almost five hundred thousand tons of that comes from lithuania although. the one in with our own and having me on or is.

this all feeds into an industrial system of vegetable production. the peters often shipped distant markets for example to stop in spain or thought the environmental balance for the peat land is absolutely negative it's much more than and the strain that is actually necessary for p. production in the more we are places and. rule for the i will do that creates climate protection problems and destroys the valuable habitats. in. the fall on it's not clear whether german companies are destroying them or is here but it's not easy to return more land to its original state. and when these areas are wet again the people forming vegetation does not come back on its own like that myself on a small scale and i shred the plants

a new vegetation starts growing from those fragments. eventually this area will be covered again with a cushion of people moss. sees the situation differently from his novel calling. remembers that during the soviet occupation the troops drained nearly all of lithuania's more land and used the peak mostly to burn his fuel. these days many lithuanians have developed a new interest in the more lands this nature trail attracts a lot of visitors despite the sometimes inclement weather. just ten percent of the mourners that are still intact have been preserved in lithuania. and in germany there are few places left where people can observe this diversity of plant and animal life. at an

observation tower sponsored by classman deilmann we asked the german companies that extract peat here. you're more corn for the new. two or good new. you have would use the root relations was walk old people where for example. or why you. accumulate why you for restoration of war. the. german peter extraction companies are apparently welcome in the baltic states. from the state of lower saxony runs a company that extracts people in latvia. working in the more difficult

heavy machines can easily get stuck in the soft ground. the soil yields not only peat but also a lot of dead pine trees some are up to two thousand years old the wood is shredded and then burned in the local power plant. by the these people so that we can keep an eye on the market higher in the baltic states so at the same time pete extraction is decreasing in northern. no but it's long to pull from of you need to get the permits are no harder to get because extraction is now only allowed on old farm land on. the topic of inflation eloped is. in germany peat can only be extracted if it lies under meadows and fields and latvia peat can be extracted from forest land but the land has to be drained first existing more land cannot be drained but peter extraction permits are relatively easy to get here and there's not a lot of red tape. another

advantage is lower labor costs and the peat producers have agreed to rework the lands where peace has been extracted even though they're not obliged to do so. this is not true that means that you could use the land for forestry later on but that's not allowed in germany you have to return the land to a completely natural state as the muslims its own upwards and do not but it's also possible that latvia may impose tougher conditions for peat extraction maybe even tougher than what we have here in germany from the involved in the uk on it's this and if you like all staffers in the. going to finds pete moss in the forest next to his people and that's a rare sight in germany these days. though he. peat moss growing right here.

as this in this wooded area is located on more land you can see that the trees are stunted when he does there's still a very small especially the pines in the branches. lining the key for state enough to live on the because. there are people lost books everywhere like this one. very dry now because it's summer. time to pop and that. germany has drained its more land so thoroughly that the peat moss was practically extinct that is that in germany this will certainly be an area that you would try to protect. but here in latvia there are so many areas like this i invite them they're not really worth protecting that's. going to be at hot after pete is extracted from an area like this it would be easier to return it to its natural state than a field that had been completely harvested because typical peat land plants grow

here. once you austin says that if pete must be extracted it is better to do it in germany than in the baltic states thereby there is no good it's not a good idea in any case but if we do have to extract peak to meet demand. the better place to do it is in germany. wanted to have both of its extraction is governed in germany and in the baltic states by regulations but here with extraction can take place only on farmland in the baltics it can be done on land that is even better prospects for restoration. of a harbor who left of her own. mom with i do know that you have to transport the peat from the baltics to germany. and that's not good for the environment. you are trying to live for. more pete could be extracted here in lower saxony but environmental groups are dead against it. but if pete is

so valuable for food production and supplies of peat are limited why does classman dominate actually burn some of the peat in the baltic states. one of the company subsidiaries in lithuania supplies peat directly to power stations. the company's home page describes it as cheaper fuel. peat is also extracted near shooter. baltic countries are even promoting the use of pete as an alternative to russian natural gas they've used to produce one hundred seventy thousand megawatt hours of energy anough to power fifty thousand homes in germany for a year. in the town in lithuania we sometimes have people that doesn't meet the quality standards for horticulture and it's high in carbon content and has largely

be composed as its mission. we mix it with wood chips so that lithuania can use it as a domestic alternative to fossil fuels if that's not so interested not just to india . yeah that's a start move of course these days that's ridiculous time corkboard cool hard call and soft call can hardly compete with the renewable energies any more or done for the r.v. it generates less energy per ton than coal in the gobi and produces more c o two per unit of the many many so the use of your heat as fuel is out of date today and not an option for the future before it would freeze and if that were full throttle . and burning peak for fuel does not exactly enhance the peak company's environmental image but sometimes people do series and consumers are able to work together in hung cars and lower saxony going out cost has joined forces with pete researchers to develop a project that could help to save more land around the world.

peat moss is cultivated here on a large scale the idea is to use local freshly harvested peat moss instead of digging up mors in the baltic states scientists from dr spock came up with the idea what. we. call has provided the land and supports the project with his own money the area is so so good that people use snowshoes to get around. because in point we're quite satisfied with our progress. and we have a variety of substrates that is gardening soils mixed from the people. we've tried them out of various nurseries we're still in the development stages but it seems to work well for more land plants like heather and we've worked with one nursery to produce larger quantities of poinsettias enough then to put it so in general we're

happy with the results from guns and do that through. the brown stripes in this green meadow our pete moss fields drainage ditches have been filled in to provide the necessary moisture. real hard and always ground out of pete moss cross best in an environment where the water level is just below the tops of the plants. normally peat moss stops growing during the summer because it gets too dry. or unusual more fruit but it also projects they have plenty of water and can grow up all summer long. oh my god it's hard to tell that this used to be more land you can find traces of it only if you dig down into the subsoil guy's fault biologist credit gondek wants to find out exactly how much peat is left here. we've

done some drilling so that we can study the content of the more including the remaining layers of peat. we want to find out whether this area is suitable for peat mosque ult of asian would like notice when we've determined that there's about a metre and a half of pete left. and the you when you want to want to stop it before. the peat can hold on a lot of water even in dry summers like this one and that's good for peter maass plants that had almost disappeared here like the sun dues are making a comeback. they thrive on the thick cushions of moss and these plants are also able to bind carbon dioxide. more land binds carbon and releases oxygen when the area dries out the process is reversed the carbon recombines with oxygen molecules and produces c o two a greenhouse gas. loop. which made all the water levels high here

in order to sharply reduce emissions of greenhouse gases which cause serious climate damage through building that's a big plus. under four dollars forty five we're also trying to find options for using more land in ways that don't harm the climate and preserve the peace while providing good productivity and a stable regional income reportedly did with young voters and your knowledge i'm obliged to growing more people would solve a lot of problems but there is not enough moss seed that's why most of the moss harvest from lower saxony is used to seek new fields forty thousand hectares would be needed to completely replace the peak that's consumed in germany researchers aim to optimize this process then convert and we'd like to see harvests of five six or even up to nine tons of dry matter per year and hector. that's quite high compared

to the productivity normally found in more land. and of. critical data is studying peat plants from all over the world. she's trying to determine which ones grow fastest and create the most biomass. and how to boost peat moss production and control the growth of weeds. justin says we have to act quickly because the food production process keeps demanding more peat. for then these are for once the meat has been extracted from these pre-trained moore's you'll have to start using the intact borders if you want the sort of pete that's used for growing tomatoes and peppers or come out of the get real then there is simply no alternative because the demand is so high. it is.

used in once to set minimum environmental standards for peta extraction companies to do that he works with the international peat land society at an i.p.s. symposium last year in rotterdam scientists and company executives met to discuss the future of people duction the conference was held on a hotel ship in rotterdam harbor. i believe in the lead far too little has been done over the last twenty years i would hope to feel being with a lot more time and money should have been invested to find alternatives for pete to limit the use of peak to low value applications and so forth. but not enough has been done because pete has always been a high quality resource that is too cheap and too widely available. for free barkha reason. the conference host is i.p.s. president carriage milewski a former klansman deilmann employee. good morning and

a very warm welcome to the first ever global plans and pete industries summit. many here are critical of yost ins policies they say that growing peat moss still needs a lot of research and that more non should be flooded only after the piece has been extracted so we can find that it fits your expertise with my ideas etc and with joint practices and experiments and study how we can do it. but things won't likely change as long as peta extraction in the baltic states remains cheap and efficient what's more china has started copying european methods of vegetable production demand for pizza could eventually exceed fifty million tons per year new markets like china will create tempting opportunities for peak companies.

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this is. britain's prime minister makes a last ditch appeal to parliament for. theresa may is about to address the house of commons before the crunch vote later today but will the doubts raised by her attorney general go any hopes that her deal will be approved.