In 2019, rampant wildfires devoured no fewer than 317,749 hectares of land, including vast swathes of biodiverse tropical rainforest. Then, just two years later, it was the turn of major floods to hit almost all districts in the province.

What can we learn from these successive bursts of fire and water?

Central Kalimantan is the province with the highest-value natural landscape in Kalimantan. Natural land cover accounts for 60 percent of the province’s total area and is host to a wide variety of forest ecosystems. However, over time these high-value natural landscapes are being depleted.

A study by the Palangka Raya Institute for Land Use and Agricultural Research (PILAR) in 2017 found that forest cover in Central Kalimantan had decreased by 4 million hectares (or 32 percent) since 1973, a rate of almost 100,000 hectares per year. This drastic change in forest cover is the result of a surge in extractive industries, plantation agriculture and human settlements, beginning in the early 1970s.

Central Kalimantan also boasts 3 million hectares of tropical peatlands; 52 percent of the total across the island of Borneo and 8 percent globally. These peatlands contain nearly 70 percent of the province’s forest biomass and a subsurface carbon stock of 9 gigatons. As well as being a significant carbon store, peat forests can also hold up to 13 times their weight in water.

Peat forests play an important role in hydrology, controlling floods and releasing their water reserves during long periods of drought, helping to stabilize the Earth’s climate.