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Western peatland management standards not suitable in RI: researcher
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Green canals : a canal is created on the edge of a palm oil plantation to drain water from tropical peatland. (thejakartapost.com/Anton Hermansyah) (thejakartapost.com/Anton Hermansyah)
T
he world’s two largest palm oil producers, Indonesia and Malaysia, should not follow European standards of peatland management due to the different climate and land characteristics of the two continents, a researcher has said.
According to Lulie Meiling, a researcher at Tropical Peat Research Laboratory, most peatland in Europe was mild shallow-peatland, consisting of low vegetation such as grasses with short roots and branches. To keep it from burning, a simple water-spraying method called 'rewetting' can be used. However, he said that such a method was not suitable for tropical peatland.
"The characteristics of tropical peatland are different. The vegetation is more complex with bigger roots and trunks, creating more pores and allowing water to go down more easily. Imagine a block of Swiss Cheese with a lot of holes, while European peat is like jelly, more solid," he said in Sarawak, Malaysia on Wednesday.
In tropical peatland, the first 20 centimeters of the soil is dry while the deeper part is mostly wet. The holes and pores make it easier for the air to come in and give fires more oxygen, Lulie explained.
"That 20-cm dry section will cause land fires, because it contains roots, twigs and wood," he said, adding that the rewetting method would simply not work because areas that were hydrated would dry up relatively quickly.
Indonesia often refers to western peatland conservation methods, as the majority of the relevant studies come from the Western world.
"There is a Greenpeace project in Palangkaraya. They created a dam to hold the water from the peatland, but it was ruined in just six months due to a lack of understanding about the characteristics of tropical peatland," Lullie said. (ags)
