Angola's peatlands vastly underestimated, new mapping reveals critical carbon stores

A team of researchers has fundamentally revised what we know about one of southern Africa's most vital landscapes. In August, they published findings showing that Angola's Angolan Highlands Water Tower—a sprawling highland region that feeds freshwater systems across the entire southern African region—contains far more peatland than anyone had previously documented. The discovery matters because peatlands are among Earth's most efficient carbon vaults. Though they cover only about three percent of the world's land surface, they store roughly a third of all soil carbon on the planet.

The new mapping effort, published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, identified between 8,662 and 11,167 square kilometers of peatland across the Angolan Highlands Water Tower, depending on confidence levels in the data. That's a dramatic expansion from earlier estimates. The researchers, led by geospatial ecologist Mauro Lourenço at the Wild Bird Trust, had previously studied a smaller portion of the region and found only about 1,634 square kilometers of peat. This time, they examined the entire 380,382 square kilometer expanse of the water tower, combining satellite imagery from the Sentinel-2 Earth observation system with five field expeditions to 51 sites on the ground. The work was a collaboration between the Wild Bird Trust, its local partner Fundação Lisima, the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project, and the Nature Conservancy. Mine-clearing operations by the Halo Trust made access to some remote areas possible—a legacy of Angola's civil war.

What makes this landscape so consequential extends far beyond Angola's borders. The peatlands act as a sponge, absorbing rainfall and gradually releasing it into river systems that supply water to the entire region. The Okavango Delta in neighboring Botswana—a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the world's few inland deltas that drain into desert rather than ocean—depends on this steady flow. So do wetlands and ecosystems across southern Africa. In October 2025, Angola formally recognized the region's importance by designating 53,000 square kilometers as the country's first Ramsar Site, or Wetland of International Importance.

But the peatlands face mounting pressure. Agricultural practices pose the most immediate threat. Farmers drain and ditch peatland soils to create arable land, a process that releases the carbon locked in the peat. Unregulated burning for land clearing is even more destructive. Shannon Flaugh, a conservation scientist at the Nature Conservancy, noted that carbon samples from the study revealed some of the stored carbon is 11,000 years old. Once released, that carbon cannot be resequestered within any human lifetime. The region's indigenous Luchazi people, who call the area Lisima Lya Mwono—"The Source of Life" in their language—rely heavily on subsistence farming and hunting. They face a difficult reality: the agricultural practices that sustain their livelihoods threaten the very ecosystem that provides water security for the entire region.

The research team is now working with local communities to design conservation strategies that balance livelihood needs with peatland protection, including improved fire management practices. Sekgowa Motsumi, the Nature Conservancy's Okavango Program Director, sees a larger opportunity. Angola currently protects only about 11 percent of its terrestrial areas—far short of the 30 percent target set by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework for 2030. By integrating peatland carbon storage into its national climate commitments, Angola could distinguish itself among African nations and unlock climate finance while protecting critical infrastructure for regional water security. The peatlands also feed the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, the world's largest terrestrial transboundary conservation zone. Without the water tower and its peatlands, Motsumi explained, the landscape cannot sustain the biodiversity the region is globally known for. Yet significant questions remain. The researchers emphasize that the mapped peatlands likely represent only a fraction of Angola's total peatland extent—other major floodplain systems remain unmapped and unstudied. More work is underway to measure the actual carbon content and understand how fire and seasonal conditions interact with peatland health. For now, the new map provides what Lourenço called a crucial baseline: a clear picture of what exists before significant degradation takes place.