Global Peatlands Initiative  The Global Peatlands Initiative is an effort made by leading experts and institutions formed in 2016 by 13 founding members at the UNFCCC COP in Marrakech, Morocco. The mission of the Initiative is to protect and conserve peatlands as the world's largest terrestrial organic carbon stock and to prevent it from being emitted into the atmosphere. Partners of the Initiative are working together within their respective areas of expertise to improve the conservation, restoration and sustainable management of peatlands. The Initiative is therefore contributing to several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including by keeping carbon stocks in the ground (SDG 13), by avoiding health impacts associated with serious air pollution from burning drained peatlands (SDG 3), by protecting water-related ecosystems and facilitating improved water quality (SDG 6), and by ensuring conservation of ecosystems and threatened species, protecting life on land (SDG 15). UN Environment's work on the conservation and restoration of peatlands is motivated by their nature as highly efficient and compact carbon sinks. While peatlands cover only 3% of the global land surface, they store nearly 550 billion tonnes of carbon – as much carbon as in all terrestrial biomass and twice as much as in all the world's forests. Considering this, peatlands are one of the greatest allies and potentially one of the quickest wins in the fight against climate change. By conserving and restoring peatlands globally, they can continue to form an essential natural carbon sink and facilitate greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Despite their value in mitigating climate change, peatlands worldwide are under increased threat from drainage for agriculture, forestry, resource extraction and infrastructure development. The negative implications of the destruction are massive: current greenhouse gas emissions from drained or burning peatlands are estimated to amount to as much as 5% of all anthropogenically-derived emissions  – in the range of two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Peatlands have so far been identified in 180 countries and they exist extensively in both tropical and temperate zones. The Global Peatlands Initiative encourages actions to keep the carbon locked in peatlands where it is – wet, and in the ground. Drained peatlands must also be rewet to halt ongoing and significant emissions. Preserving peatlands, though, requires knowing their locations, which has been a challenge for scientists. The Global Peatlands Initiative is an international partnership formed by 13 founding members at the UNFCCC COP in Marrakech, Morocco, in late 2016. Its goal is to protect and conserve peatlands as the world's largest terrestrial organic carbon stock.