One of the enduring memories of my childhood is the smell of the peat fire burning in the grate of Packie and Kathleen’s home in Sligo, Ireland. That is a long time ago now, but there are still many people in Ireland who burn peat.

Turns out that there are lots of them in Finland as well. In fact, the Finnish word for their country is “Suomi” – ‘suo’ meaning mire or swamp – and peatland makes up almost one third of Finland, although a great deal of it was degraded during Finland’s post-WWII industrialization.

One of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prizes – often referred to as the environmental Nobel – has been awarded to Tero Mustonen, who since 2018 has led the transformation of 70 severely degraded former industrial peat mining and forestry sites throughout Finland into productive, biodiverse wetlands and habitats – almost 130,000 acres. It is the first Goldman prize for Finland.