Less than one year after its adoption, the Paris Agreement has entered into force, with some 175 countries already on board. The next step will be to begin implementing the commitments each country has made. In Southeast Asia in particular, a great deal of international cooperation will be required to address certain issues that transcend national boundaries.

One of the largest obstacles to climate change efforts in Southeast Asia remains Indonesia’s forest and peatland fires. Though these fires are perhaps most notorious as the source of the annual haze that blankets our region, the issue is not only about regional air pollution, but rightly framed as a global concern about carbon emissions.

To put things into perspective, Indonesia’s 2015 fires produced the equivalent of 1,750 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (MtCO2e), which is almost the same amount emitted by Indonesia’s entire economy in an average year (1,800 MtCO2e).

Hence, it is heartening that Indonesia has shown such resolve in addressing the issue. The reduction in fires this year must be credited to not only wetter weather, but also the political will and concerted efforts of the Jokowi administration.

At the peak of the haze crisis last year, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo visited South Sumatra to understand the fires first-hand, and subsequently established the Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG) in January 2016. The BRG has been charged with coordinating the restoration of 2.1 million hectares of degraded peatland across Indonesia by 2020.

Following clear instructions by President Jokowi to “get very tough” on errant companies, Indonesian police have arrested more than double the number of individuals in forest fire cases this year as compared to last year. The Indonesian government is also responding faster to fires, enabled by the early declaration of a state of emergency in six provinces. These efforts have been commended by regional leaders, including Singapore’s Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Masagos Zulkifli.

Such measures were crucial in the immediate aftermath of the fires. But the true challenge comes in figuring out how to tackle this complex problem in the long term.

One pressing issue is the ongoing debate over the most appropriate way to restore degraded peatland. Comprised of partially decayed organic matter, peatland is often drained to grow oil palm, acacia trees for pulp and paper and other agricultural crops. But drained peat is highly flammable during the dry season, resulting in fires that can take months to extinguish.

Some parties contend that the only sustainable way to restore degraded peatland is to rewet, reforest and protect the entire landscape. Otherwise, fires that start on agricultural lands may easily spread into protected areas, destroying intact forests.

Worse still, protected forest will continue to be affected by drainage from surrounding agricultural areas. Drainage causes peatland to subside, causing the land to become flooded and unusable in the long term.

Other parties argue that it is unrealistic to reforest large peatland areas that already contain thousands of villages and extensive industrial plantations, which generate a great deal of employment and economic benefit. They also point to the fact that there is still a limited market for native peatland crops that do not require drainage — such as jelutong, sago and illipe nut — as compared to more commonly grown crops such as oil palm and areca nut.

It appears that the Indonesian government’s approach is to strike a balance between these competing concerns. On Dec. 1, President Jokowi signed a regulation governing peatland that banned all new land clearance, established a minimum ratio between cultivation and conservation areas, and set out guidelines for the proper management of peatland plantations. BRG has plans to rewet areas set aside for conservation and improve their fire readiness by installing wells and monitoring systems.

Now, Indonesia faces the challenge of harmonizing these standards across its 12.9 million hectares of peatland, which will likely be a complex and time-consuming process. In the meantime, the scale and urgency of peatland restoration will require the support of parties from outside Indonesia.

First, collaboration is required to improve and disseminate knowledge about peatland, which remains an under-researched subject. COP 22 saw the launch of the Global Peatlands Initiative (GPI), the largest international collaboration on peatland to date, which aims to share scientific knowledge to develop local capacity for peatland management. Indonesia is one of the founding members of the Initiative.

Closer to home, the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, the World Resources Institute Indonesia and other leading non-governmental organizations in ASEAN recently organized the Regional Peat Restoration Workshop in Jakarta, which showcased ongoing restoration efforts in order to share learning points with others conducting similar projects.

Second, peatland restoration is expensive and will require financial support from other countries. Funding is especially needed to scale up current projects, many of which are still at a “pilot” stage, to the landscape level to maximize impact and minimize the conflicts that may result between multiple, smaller projects.

One recently-launched initiative to provide such funding is the Tropical Landscapes Finance Facility, which has mobilized over US$1.1 billion of investments to reverse land degradation, prevent unwise land conversion, and improve revenues for small farmers. Western donors, most notably Norway, have also pledged about $135 million to support the BRG. Others in the international and regional community can and should add their support.

In the longer term, Indonesia’s strategy involves converting land currently used for plantations to ecosystem restoration concessions, which finance the restoration of forests and peatlands through the sale of carbon credits, among other methods. The international community plays a crucial role in developing the market and providing the demand for such credits.

Climate change is rightly seen as an issue that affects all countries. Now that Indonesia has taken several important steps to prevent the return of fires, it is vital that other countries move beyond giving kudos and begin supporting its efforts. Though approaches may differ, there is a need to recognize that we are working towards the same goal and that there are significant areas of overlap to work on.

The need is urgent, and we must not lose the valuable momentum that has been built up so far behind forest and peatland restoration.

***

Nirarta Samadhi is country director for the World Resources Institute Indonesia and Simon Tay is chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.

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