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View all search resultsFires still threaten peatlands, even in restoration areas
The Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG) has been tasked with carrying out restoration projects since 2015.
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Peatland Restoration Agency head Nazir Foead (center) makes an impromptu visit to check alleged peatland conversion in Meranti Islands, Riau, on Sept. 5, 2018. (JP/Rizal Harahap)
T
he threat of fire continues to hang over peatlands, even in areas dedicated for restoration purposes. A warning about the imminent danger in fire-prone peatland areas was recently raised by Jakarta-based Madani Berkelanjutan, an environmental nongovernmental organization focusing on forest and land management.
A study by Madani Berkelanjutan of peatland areas in Riau province between January and March found 737 hot spots in the province, some 96 percent of which were located within prioritized areas for peatland restoration. Results of the study were obtained through spatial data analysis, which was combined with field investigation into hot spots in the province.
The Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG), which has been tasked with carrying out restoration projects in peatland areas across the country since 2015, has identified 814,000 hectares (over 80 percent of which is in plantation concessions) of burned peatland in Riau that need to be restored.
A forestry professor at the Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), Bambang Hero Saharjo, said the most important thing to do in preventing fires and restoring the peatland areas was to ensure plantation companies complied with the government-sanctioned peatland restoration projects and followed the available standardized procedures.
“If those concession areas have been included in prioritized areas for restoration, they [the companies] should have restored them by the fourth year [since the restoration project began],” Bambang said at the publication of the study on Tuesday.
“In fact, these concession areas have remained a problem in the peatland restoration projects,” he added, while citing plots that are effectively unproductive and abandoned but still with operational permits.
He lamented the government’s failure to take serious action against such irregularities and its tendency to ignore them when the problems arose.
