K

yoto University has teamed up with the National Institute for the Humanities (NIHU) to help out with Indonesia’s ambitious peatland restoration project, an initiative that aims to see 2.26 million hectares of damaged peatland restored in the next five years.

The partnership team plan to research the various types of restorative treatments to be carried out within each recovery site and will focus on how to involve local people so as to later see them achieve an improved level of livelihood.

“BRG, Kyoto University and the NIHU recognize the importance of peatland restoration, not only the process of rewetting but, more importantly, to provide a better livelihood for local people. Each party recognizes the importance of collaborating officially, the details of which will soon be laid out in a memorandum of understanding [MoU]. We will endeavor to sign the MoU in June in Jakarta,” Kyoto University Center for Southeast Asian Studies director Kosuke Mizuno said.

Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG) head Nazir Foead said that partnership with foreign countries would be vital to the restoration project due to the scale of the problem. Many people hope the restoration project will help to end the annual land and forest fires,

“Usually, worldwide, peatlands emit 2 gigatons of CO2 per year but last year Indonesia’s peat fires emitted 2 gigatons of CO2, matching the global number,” he said.

Nazir added that the partnership would be unlike previous partnerships between the university and the government as the result of the joint research would be implemented in the affected areas.

“Our research program will be very unique because as it’s not merely a research undertaking for scientific publication. It’s important to conduct on the ground research and to implement very rigorous scientific monitoring so as to correct those actions on the ground which are not achieving expected results,” he said.

Kosuke said that the university would like the research to focus on the regencies of Meranti and Bengkalis, where land and forest fires had razed much of the land last year.

He added that the partnership would not only focus on rewetting dried out peatland, which is the key to prevent fires from razing for a long time, but also revegetating.

“The Kyoto University would like to focus on Meranti and Bengkalis regencies in Riau in two aspects: rewetting and revegetation. But revegetation is not actually easy because land types vary, from state-owned land to concessions, production forests, conservation forests, abandoned land and cultivated land. So Kyoto University wants to find the most correct [revegetation] pattern for each type of land,” he said.