Rothenthurm Initiative — Constitutional Moor Protection & Peatland Carbon Offsets (Switzerland)

In 1983, farmers from Rothenthurm and WWF Switzerland launched a citizens' initiative to stop a planned Swiss Army training ground on a roughly 100-hectare upland moor in the Biber valley, Canton Schwyz — one of the country's last large raised bogs. The campaign gathered 163,000 signatures within about six months. On 6 December 1987, Swiss voters approved the initiative with 58% support, making Switzerland the only country to date to enshrine moor protection directly in its federal constitution (Article 78). Cantons are now legally obliged to protect, and where possible restore, moors of national importance.

The initiative's immediate objective was to block a specific Swiss Army training ground on an ecologically significant upland moor. Its longer-term aim, achieved through the 1987 referendum, was to secure durable constitutional protection and restoration obligations for moors and fens of national importance across Switzerland, rather than relying on ordinary, more easily reversed legislation.

Building on this legal foundation, voluntary carbon-offset projects have since emerged. myclimate, working with local alpine cooperatives (Alpkorporationen) and cantonal authorities, runs SGS-validated peatland rewetting projects, applying a methodology developed by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL). Comparable myclimate projects operate at Teufimatt, La Gruère and Sous-Martel-Dernier in addition to the Schwändital site.

Today roughly 550 raised bogs and around 1,200-1,335 fens of national importance are protected under Article 78, covering about 240 km2 (some 0.6% of Swiss territory). At the Gross Moos site in Schwändital, Canton Glarus, 3.8 hectares were rewetted for an estimated 3,521 tCO2e avoided over 50 years. These protections preserve only a fraction of the moors that existed before an estimated 90% were destroyed over the preceding two centuries.

Individual carbon projects remain small — a few hectares each — relative to Switzerland's roughly 24,000 hectares of nationally protected moor, and function as discrete voluntary offsets rather than a national crediting mechanism. The 1987 initiative's principal, best-evidenced achievement is durable legal protection of existing carbon stocks, rather than large-scale new sequestration.