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3.8m hectares of peatland at high risk of fire
Up to 3.8 million hectares of peatland areas are at high risk from being burned, as peatland-restoration efforts are overshadowed by lackluster fire mitigation and weak law enforcement, according to environmental coalition Pantau Gambut
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Firefighters battle a blaze at a peatland forest in Ogan Ilir, Riau, on July 31, 2021. (AFP/Abdul Qodir)
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p to 3.8 million hectares of peatland areas are at high risk from being burned, as peatland-restoration efforts are overshadowed by lackluster fire mitigation and weak law enforcement, according to environmental coalition Pantau Gambut.
In its 2023 study on the potential for land and forest fires on peatland hydrological units (KHG) in Indonesia, which was released on Thursday, the coalition found that up to 16.4 million hectares of peatland areas are at risk of being burned, about 3.8 million hectares of which were considered at high risk.
The study was conducted using a dataset of hot spots and areas burned from the land and forest fires that occurred from 2015 to 2019, as well as other variables such as land cover type, soil type, concession areas and tree cover losses.
Pantau Gambut researcher Almi Ramadhi pointed out that South Papua, one of the newly established provinces in Papua, had the highest proportion of risk from fires on peatlands, with 97 percent of the total 1,421 hectares of peatland of the Ifuleki-Bian River and Dalik River at high risk of being burned.
Meanwhile, Central Kalimantan has the most areas at high risk, with around 1.13 million ha spread over KHG at high risk from fires, Almi said. The high risk areas in the province also include areas of former food estate project the Peatland Development (PLG).
In the mid-1990s, the administration of then-president Soeharto sought to develop a food estate project called the PLG by converting 1.4 million ha of peatland into farmland in Central Kalimantan.
“Talking about fires in Central Kalimantan is hard without acknowledging the areas of former PLG land, the food estate project that failed,” Almi said at the launch of the study in Jakarta.
