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Women in peatland areas strive for themselves, their families
Experts urge more women participation on the peatland restoration program.
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In 2015, Indonesia experienced widespread fires for most of the year. The World Bank reported in February 2016, that at least 2.6 million hectares of land (mostly peatland) had caught fire that year in just five months, from June to October. The economic losses were estimated at US$16.1 billion. (JP/Hotli Simanjuntak)
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or generations, women in the village of Sungai Namang in South Kalimantan’s Hulu Sungai Utara regency have learned and passed down the traditional craft of weaving mats from purun (grey sedge grass).
But much of the grass was burned down in 2015 during Indonesia’s worst haze crisis.
Government data show that at least 2.6 million hectares of land in Sumatra and Kalimantan – an area 4.5 times the size of Bali – was burned from June to October 2015. By October 2015, more than 100,000 ha of land were destroyed in each of eight provinces suffering most under the massive forest and land fires.
The weaving tradition has been passed down for generations in Sungai Namang, with female villagers learning from their mothers to create the mats they later sell to help them meet their daily needs.
Yeni Kusuma, a village facilitator from Sungai Namang, said that, as the village’s peatland areas were continuously shrinking, the women relied increasingly on purun for a living.
“Now, whatever their main job may be, most women in the village make purun mats for a living. So, when the forest and land fires occurred, it was devastating, because the women lost their purun. With the degraded peatland, they don’t have many options to earn a living and support their families,” Yeni told The Jakarta Post after a discussion on Tuesday.
She said a group of facilitators, along with the villagers, was gradually replanting purun. The group also taught the women in the village to make the grass more sustainable for the long term.
