TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Water-based economy key to saving Indonesia's peatlands: BRG
An official has said that a two-pronged approach combining conservation and economic development is needed to save Indonesia's peatlands.
Change Size
A member of the East Tanjungjabung Fire Brigade fights a fire in the Londerang protected peatland on Sept. 5, 2019. (JP/Jon Afrizal)
A
n official at the Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG) has called on researchers to find a way to develop a water-based economy as "a common ground" for private companies and other stakeholders to join forces in restoring the country's vast peatlands.
The BRG's research and development deputy, Haris Gunawan, made the call on Thursday, addressing dozens of researchers at a book launch and discussion organized by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
Haris also cautioned that "the problem will not be resolved within a generation" if a common ground was not established, stressing that simple measures could have been used to restore peatlands if not for their "protracted" degradation.
Haris said that his research team and its partners had found that returning to the basic concept of maintaining the water balance was the best way of accelerating peatland restoration as a means of preventing forest fires. Maintaining the water balance would restore the hydrological functions of peatlands, which collected water during the rainy season and prevented excessive runoff to maintain a sufficient supply of water during the dry season, he said.
Achieving this objective required enforcing a landscape-scale approach to peatland restoration and management, Haris continued. This would involve dividing a peatland area into three concentric zones: an innermost zone containing the peat dome, with its high carbon and water content and conservation function, surrounded by a buffer zone of native plant species, and an outermost lagg zone of vegetation.
"However, it can be very difficult to find [these zones] in nature, because almost all of the 800 KHGs [peat hydrological units] in Indonesia are no longer structured like this," said Haris.
The Environment and Forestry Ministry's 2017 data shows that Indonesia has 865 KHGs covering 24.66 million hectares.
