Carbon Sinks and Climate Neutrality:
Navigating EU Legal Frameworks through the Example of Irish Peatlands
The European Climate Law sets out a clear goal: the EU must reach climate neutrality by 2050. This means that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the Union must be balanced by removals, so that no more is added to the atmosphere than is taken out. To get there, cutting emissions is only part of the solution. Member States also need to rely on natural ecosystems that absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, i.e. ‘carbon sinks’. As physical spaces embedded in specific social, cultural, and economic contexts, ecosystems do not exist in a vacuum solely for the purpose of climate mitigation, but are subject to competing demands. This results in carbon sinks being regulated by overlapping rules which may be aimed at biodiversity protection or land development and may clash with climate-neutrality.
This blog post provides a brief overview of how carbon sinks are protected under EU law, highlighting areas of interaction between EU climate law and other domains, particularly EU environmental and biodiversity law, as well as national land use planning. Because tensions between legal frameworks governing ecosystems and land use are highly context-dependent, making carbon sink protection a place-based challenge, this blog uses peatlands in Ireland as a lens to explore these dynamics. Despite being the most space-efficient terrestrial carbon sinks, peatlands remain less studied than other carbon-rich ecosystems and are similarly under-protected, while Ireland, home to extensive peatland resources, has long grappled with the competing demands of ecosystem protection and land use.
Accounting of Emissions and Removals under the EU LULUCF Regulation
To boost carbon absorption and reduce emissions from land use, the EU adopted – and later updated – the Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) Regulation. This legal framework allows GHG emissions and removals from land-based activities to count toward the EU’s climate targets during two key commitment periods. From 2021 to 2025, Member States must comply with the ‘no-debit rule’, which means that emissions from LULUCF activities cannot exceed the amount of carbon removed. From 2026 to 2030, Member States must comply with binding national targets, which taken together should deliver an EU-wide target: 310 million tonnes of net carbon removals (CO₂ equivalent) by 2030.
What must Member States do in practice to achieve the LULUCF targets? Essentially, they are required to prepare and maintain accounts that reflect emissions and removals from land uses. These accounts are based on data already reported annually in the GHG inventory and the national inventory report submitted to the European Commission and the UNFCCC, following the methodology outlined in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. The accounts prepared by Member States will serve to track progress toward the targets set for both commitment periods. However, as Ireland’s experience shows, the LULUCF sector still faces a high degree of uncertainty when it comes to estimating emissions and removals, despite progress in scientific understanding and improvements in land-use data. Key challenges include the lack of consistent, on-the-ground data collected over time and across different sites, as well as significant knowledge gaps about the extent of Ireland’s peatlands, their drainage conditions, and current land use.
Between old Designations of Protected Areas under the EU Habitats Directive and new Restoration Efforts under the EU Nature Restoration Law
The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 recognises nature as an ally in the fight against climate change and distinguishes between the protection and restoration of ecosystems such as peatlands, which are considered essential for emissions reduction.
In terms of protection, the Strategy builds on the pre-existing network of protected areas - the foremost legal tool for protecting ecosystems - with the aim of expanding it. Under the Habitats Directive, Member States are indeed required to designate ecologically important habitats, such as peatlands, as Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), with the overarching goal of maintaining or restoring these sites to a healthy and stable ecological condition. Although the Directive was not adopted with the specific aim of enhancing carbon sinks - since climate concerns were not prominent at the time - it may nonetheless have contributed indirectly to their protection by safeguarding biodiversity-rich ecosystems. Once designated, any activity that could significantly degrade the ecosystem is restricted or regulated, notably through the appropriate assessment procedure, which must be carried out before approving any plan or project likely to affect the site, resulting in clear implications for land use. In Ireland, for instance, this system of protection has led to a ban on peat extraction activities on SACs, prompting resistance from land users and posing challenges for the Directive’s implementation.
In terms of restoration, although obligations already exist under the Habitats Directive, ongoing ecosystem degradation led the EU Biodiversity Strategy to call for specific, binding targets and clear criteria - this time explicitly recognising the carbon storage potential of ecosystems. This paved the way for the first-ever EU Nature Restoration Law, which establishes legally binding restoration targets for degraded ecosystems, including specific targets for peatlands, which apply to both designated and non-designated sites. In practice, Member States must develop national restoration plans and identify the measures that are necessary to meet the restoration targets – a development to watch closely in the near future.
However, it is important to note that on non-designated sites, the obligations to restore and prevent further deterioration do not apply where degradation results from the expansion of renewable energy installations, which are presumed to be of overriding public interest. This exception creates a tension between restoration goals and renewable energy development - a conflict already evident in Ireland, where many wind farms are located in peatland areas. Similarly, there is no obligation on private landowners to restore their land, as restoration remains voluntary for them, underscoring the ongoing tension between environmental and climate objectives and private property rights.
Land Use Restrictions under National Planning Laws and the EU EIA Directive
Since ecosystems are also spaces where human activity and land use take place - and because land-use planning falls within the competence of national governments - the protection of carbon sinks often depends on national planning rules that regulate such activities. Some of these rules, like the requirement for an appropriate assessment under the Habitats Directive, are mandated by EU law but implemented through national planning systems.
While the previous section addressed restrictions within designated areas, in non-designated areas, Member States are required, under the EU Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive, to evaluate the effects of projects likely to have significant impacts on the environment. In Ireland, for example, development on peatland sites outside protected areas is subject to this assessment process, which is embedded in national planning law. Once the assessment is completed, planning permission must be obtained from the relevant authority before any land development can proceed, with decisions typically made in accordance with the overarching national planning strategy.
Although the EIA Directive was not originally adopted with climate change in mind, its 2014 amendment explicitly requires that potential climate impacts be considered within the assessment process, including the loss of carbon sink habitats and associated CO₂ emissions from land use change. However, the extent to which such assessments can meaningfully capture climate impacts remains uncertain. Irish case law, for instance, has established that assessing a development’s specific contribution to climate change can be difficult to quantify and may impose an “onerous and unworkable obligation” on the authorities conducting the assessment.
The planning consent system, shaped by EU environmental law, can nevertheless play a role in protecting carbon sinks, particularly through the discretion local authorities have to refuse projects that would significantly harm ecosystems. At the same time, because land-use planning is primarily focused on facilitating development, with environmental and climate protection as secondary considerations, it can also enable projects that undermine carbon sink protection when other priorities take precedence.
Concluding Remarks
Protecting and restoring carbon sinks is essential to achieving the EU’s climate neutrality target by 2050, but doing so is far from straightforward. These ecosystems are governed by a complex web of legal frameworks, spanning climate law, biodiversity law, and national planning systems, that can both support and undermine each other. While EU legislation such as the LULUCF Regulation, the Habitats Directive, and the EIA Directive each contribute to carbon sink governance, they were developed with different priorities in mind and often operate in silos. As the example of Irish peatlands illustrates, the result is a fragmented legal landscape, where climate goals may clash with development objectives or where biodiversity protections do not always align with carbon sink preservation.
Admittedly, difficult choices are inevitable in balancing the competing interests embedded in ecosystem management; yet it is important to remember that these ecosystems are also home to the people who live nearby and depend on them. EU regulations rarely incorporate built-in mechanisms to engage affected communities or to systematically account for the lived realities of people whose livelihoods, identities, or land use practices are tied to these ecosystems. As a result, ecosystem management risks becoming overly technocratic, driven more by compliance with legal targets than by a holistic understanding of ecosystems as both ecological and social spaces. Moving forward, the EU’s legal frameworks must evolve not only to foster legal coherence and cross-sectoral integration, but also to enable more context-sensitive approaches to carbon sink governance.
About the author
Alessandra Accogli
Alessandra completed her PhD in Law at the UCD Sutherland School of Law and she is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the DCU School of Law and Government, working on the Horizon Europe RETOOL Project, which focuses on strengthening democratic governance in the context of climate transitions. Her research lies at the intersection of climate change law, environmental law, and human rights law. She is particularly interested in how legal frameworks for climate and environmental protection can be aligned with justice considerations and the safeguarding of human rights.
Alessandra holds an LLM in Public International Law from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). She also completed a one-year Master’s in Political Science at ULB and a second-cycle Master’s degree in Law at the Università del Salento (UniSalento). She has also lectured in environmental law and human rights law at UCD and has been a guest lecturer in climate change law at several universities across Europe (Graz, ULB, Portsmouth).