T

he biggest question looming over all the laws and regulations the government has enacted so far to protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions is how strong and consistent their enforcement will be.

 Likewise, the effectiveness of the latest regulation on peatland ecosystem management and protection will rest on the government’s ability to enforce all the elaborate provisions, which in effect impose a permanent moratorium on the conversion of peatland into plantations.

Under the new regulation, any conversion of peatland into plantations such as palm oil is prohibited, until a zoning system for the protection and cultivation of the peatland ecosystem is in place.

The new policy demonstrates the government’s serious commitment to protecting carbon-rich peatlands from exploitation, which has led not only to damage of the peat areas, but also caused massive annual forest fires in many parts of the country, particularly in the northern and southern parts of Sumatra.

Peatland has become the main target for agricultural expansion, such as oil palm plantations, as fertile land becomes increasingly scarce. In order to be able to use peatland for plantations, the underlying peat needs to be drained, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. When dried, the peaty soil is flammable, which often causes fires that spread to forest areas.

The new peatland protection initiative should be supported, not only because it would make a major contribution to the Paris climate agreement, but also it would be able to help reduce peatland fires more effectively. The thick haze caused by vast forest fires in the country last year, which also affected other parts of Southeast Asia, reportedly led to more than 100,000 deaths.

Indonesia, the world’s sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has more than 15 million hectares of peatland, according to Indonesia’s Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG). Global research institution World Resources Institute estimates that by 2030, total emission reductions from the revised regulation could equal approximately 5.5-7.8 gigatons of CO2, depending on whether the hydrology of peat within existing plantations is restored.

The revised regulation builds on a set of existing policies including a two-year moratorium on the issuance of new permits to clear rain forests and peatland, which has been strongly opposed by the country’s palm oil producers.

 We do understand that Indonesia, now the largest palm oil producer in the world, needs to further increase its palm oil production to meet the global demand for vegetable oil, but this development should be conducted through environmentally sustainable practices.

 The government should improve the business climate for more intensive research to develop new high-yield oil palm seedlings so that we can steadily and significantly increase our production without encroaching into peatland.

Major palm oil producers should also be given incentives to help smallholders, who account for 40 percent of the total plantations, to replant their crops with high-yield seedlings. The use of genetic engineering in propagating high-quality seedlings could also contribute significantly to increasing output.