Virtual
Canada
Welcome to Peat-Fest 2022!
The theme of this year’s Peat-Fest is Rights of Peatlands, so we’ll be taking inspiration from the incredible global successes of the Rights of Nature movement and collaboratively applying some of these ideas to peatlands.
Already in its third year, Peat-Fest is an extraordinary space to come together to celebrate and co-create action for peatlands. We welcome people from all walks of life, all experience levels, and all corners of our planet.
What are the Rights of Peatlands?
Rights
of
to
for
peatlands
through rights, beyond rights
towards social and ecological justice
We chose Rights of Peatlands as this year’s theme because we see a huge amount of value in connecting the Rights of Nature movement to peatlands, and want to collaboratively kickstart the process of acknowledging these rights. As a powerful tool, Rights of Nature has the potential to transform our relationship with the natural world when done in collaboration with other vital decolonial work. Expansion of legal systems for the non-human world provides us with the opportunity to hold corporations and governments accountable.
Peatlands are truly ecosystems for our times - representing both a vast existential risk and a huge potential for positive transformation, the course of which we follow depends on the actions of those active today. Likewise, Rights of Nature is emerging as a hugely impactful tool for ensuring viable ecosystems in the short term, and potentially contributing to transforming our relationship with our natural surroundings going forward and shaking up the way we speak about, think about and imagine peatlands in western discourse.
We’re looking forward to the great discussions to be had on the Rights of Peatlands!
What to expect?
Peat-Fest this year will run across 6 days, with several hours per day of sessions, which will be a mix of talks and workshops. For those of you attended in previous years, you will know that whilst it was a lot of fun and demonstrated how many sides and stories there are to peatlands, we felt that this year, it was best to take our time! We’re also focusing more explicitly on creating action, and working to build the communities that can take on Rights of Peatlands and other peatland-related challenges.
You can choose to attend all the sessions, you can pick and choose according to those you are most drawn to, you can watch the sessions back on Youtube later, whatever fits your schedule best!
FYI - We will be only sharing recordings from the talks, rather than the workshops, so bear that in mind with your planning!
Who will be there? What will we be doing?
The full programme will be released soon!
For now, you can expect to hear from the Center for Democratic and Environmental and Rights, Radha D’Souza, Alistair McIntosh, CreaTures Glossay, Mar Menor and Khairani Barokka.
How to join in?
The sessions will all be held online, via Zoom. By signing up you are agreeing to be contacted by RE-PEAT regarding the festival. You will first be sent a confirmation from Eventbrite and we will send out a thorough invite via our email (info(at)re-peat.earth) at a later date. This will contain all the information you need to take part, and you expect this in your inbox approximately 2 weeks before the event (mid August)
What are peatlands?
Globally 3% of the Earth’s land and freshwater surface area is covered with peatlands. They are the planet’s largest terrestrial carbon store, holding twice the carbon as all forests combined. Alongside their role in cooling the planet, healthy peatlands offer many other gifts to our communities and the world, including water purification, as well as flood and fire prevention. Peatlands are also spaces for respite, and are home to weird and wonderful animals and plants.
Who is RE-PEAT?
RE-PEAT is a youth-led collective on a mission to change people’s perceptions of peatlands. We work in a collaborative, creative and holistic fashion, depicting peatlands themselves in novel ways as well as placing a large focus on the broader context of peatlands. We strongly believe peatlands can teach us and offer insights into a wide array of societal features and issues, including deep time, the relationship between humans and the natural world, how and what we collectively choose to remember and how we can think beyond binaries.
Tickets are free, donations are encouraged!
Peatlands are for everyone, which is why we have made Peat-Fest freely accessible for everyone, regardless of their financial situation. Although the festival will be free of charge, we do want to encourage all who are able to make a donation to do so. This can be as big or small as you can afford. Unfortunately, we were only able to secure a small percentage of the total cost of the event, meaning that the majority of Peat-Fest costs will be taken directly from the group’s small pot of savings.
Through buying a ticket you can help us stay (financially) healthy as a collective and keep doing our work in the long run (i.e. stick around till Peat Fest #4!). Below we have outlined what we believe to be suitable donation ranges based on income, and according to solidarity economy principles (bearing in mind as well that there may be other factors that influence your donation choice besides incomes).