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Third Biennial International Workshop of The Venice Agreement on Peatlands (2026), Papyrus Wetlands of Nam Lolwe / Lake Victoria, Kisumu, Kenya.
The gathering brought together more than 40 peatland custodians, scientists, artists, Indigenous leaders, conservation practitioners, policymakers, and community organisers from Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Timed to coincide with World Peatlands Day (2 June) and World Environment Day (5 June), the workshop placed African peatlands and the communities who care for them at the centre of an international exchange around peatland protection, restoration, and reciprocal care.
Building on previous gatherings in Venice (2022) and Torres Vedras (2024), the programme was shaped around learning directly from the papyrus wetlands of Nam Lolwe / Lake Victoria and the people working with and for these landscapes. Field visits, workshops, artistic interventions, shared meals, conversations, and collective working sessions created opportunities for participants to exchange experiences from different peatland contexts while developing new relationships and collaborations.
One of the processes running throughout the gathering was the continued development of the ‘Living Menu of How-Tos’ – an evolving collection of practical, community-led approaches to peatland stewardship, education, legal innovation, cultural practice, and ecological restoration.
The workshop also became a space for developing shared resources for the wider Venice Agreement community. These included the Peatland Communities Map, a living collective map connecting communities caring for peatlands around the world, and the 2026 Venice Agreement poster, collaboratively shaped through drawings and visual contributions gathered from participants in Kisumu.
Field trip to Yala Swamp, Siaya and Busia counties, Kenya
Collective review of the VA Community Framework Document at the Mama Grace Onyango Social & Cultural Centre, Kisumu, Kenya
African Senna (Senna didymobotrya), Yala Swamp, Siaya and Busia counties, Kenya
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The gathering in Kenya formed one part of a much wider process taking place across peatlands around the world. In the lead-up to Kisumu, 18 Underground Workshops were organised from Argentina to Uganda and from Australia to Norway.
The Underground Workshops are the distributed, locally rooted core of the Venice Agreement. Organised by peatland custodians and communities in their own landscapes, they create spaces for responding to local peatland realities, sharing knowledge, and gathering practical tools for their protection. Experiences and materials from these workshops travelled to Kisumu, connecting locally specific actions with the wider international gathering.
Underground Workshop, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
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Peat Pen Pals, an ongoing initiative I facilitate with RE-PEAT, was embedded within the Venice Agreement programme in collaboration with Ecofinder Kenya. At the Dunga Wetland Education Centre, participants reflected on their own relationships with peatlands, drawing on ideas and prompts that had emerged throughout the week. Through words, drawings, and other forms of expression, they created letters for unknown pen pals, sharing what makes their local peatlands and communities special.
Around 50 letters were created in Kisumu, with half travelling onwards to Chile and half to the UK, extending the conversations and connections of the Venice Agreement beyond the gathering itself.
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Artistic practice was woven throughout the workshop, including WETSOUND Radio, an artistic radio action initiated by Sensing Peat and artist and radio poet Yasmeen Al-Qaisi, in collaboration with the Institute of Multi-Species Singing, Ecofinder Kenya, Radio Nam Lolwe 97.3 FM Kisumu, and international radio partners.
Broadcast live from Dunga Swamp and the Mama Grace Onyango Social and Cultural Centre, WETSOUND brought together field recordings, conversations, stories, music, and performances emerging throughout the gathering. Voices from local communities, peatland custodians, artists, and scientists travelled through community radio in Kenya and internationally, creating an evolving sound archive of the workshop and opening the gathering to audiences beyond those physically present in Kisumu.
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The Venice Agreement gatherings are conceived not as isolated events, but as moments within an ongoing process of exchange and relationship-building. The conversations, collaborations, and commitments that emerged in Kisumu will continue to develop through the VA community and its different peatland contexts over the coming years.
In 2028, the Fourth Biennial International Workshop will take place on the island of Chiloé in southern Chile. The gathering will create another opportunity to learn from local peatland realities while connecting them with experiences from elsewhere – continuing to cultivate relationships between people, places, and peatlands.
Credits
The 2026 gathering in Kisumu and accompanying global Underground Workshops were organised by the Venice Agreement Organising Committee – Antonieta Eguren, Camila Marambio, Caroline Vitzthum, Cisca Devereux, Fernanda Olivares, Leonard Akwany, Miguel Geraldes, Nicole Püschel, and Suza Husse – together with Ecofinder Kenya, RE-PEAT, WCS Chile, Sensing Peat, the Michael Succow Foundation (partner in the Greifswald Mire Centre), Hach Saye, W-U-Replay, and the United Nations Environment Programme's Global Peatlands Initiative (GPI).
The gathering was made possible with support from the Andrea von Braun Foundation, the United Nations Environment Programme's Global Peatlands Initiative (GPI), the Peat4People consortium (GIZ, FAO, Michael Succow Foundation), and the IUCN UK Peatland Programme.
Papyrus wetlands along the shores of Nam Lolwe / Lake Victoria, Kisumu, Kenya
Judith Oluoch, County Executive Committee
Member (CECM) in charge of Environment, Water, and Climate Change in Kisumu County, Kenya
Member (CECM) in charge of Environment, Water, and Climate Change in Kisumu County, Kenya
Collective development of a ‘Living Menu of How-Tos’