Indonesian environmentalist Pralensa steered his boat through a shallow canal in the marshy peatlands near his village, an environment he fears might soon disappear.
His oar stirred up rich organic material in the brackish water, evidence of the layers of plant matter that make peatlands vital carbon dioxide stores and key to biodiversity.
Indonesia has more tropical peatland than any other country, but it is also quickly losing this poorly understood ecosystem.
Photo: AFP
That affects local residents and wildlife, and also has global impacts, because converted peatland could release vast quantities of planet-warming carbon dioxide.
Just 18.4 percent of Indonesia’s peatlands remain “undisturbed,” a 2023 study found, with vast tracts now palm oil or timber plantations.
Pralensa worries a similar fate awaits much of the swampy peatland around his village of Lebung Itam in South Sumatra.
Locals said palm oil firm Bintang Harapan Palma has already begun digging canals to drain the peatlands for planting.
“We protested... we told them this is a community-managed area,” Pralensa said. “According to them, they already have rights to this land.”
Peatlands are an in-between place — seemingly neither water nor land — an environment that slows plant decomposition and forms carbon-rich peat.
Covering just 3 percent of the world’s surface, they hold an estimated 44 percent of all soil carbon.
Indonesia’s peatlands are home to endangered orangutans and economically important fish species. They also help prevent flooding and drought, lower local temperatures and minimize saltwater intrusion.
Indonesia’s peatland has long been converted for agriculture, drained of the water that is its lifeblood, with severe consequences.
Dry peat is highly flammable, and fire could smoulder underground and reignite seemingly at will.
Peatlands were a leading cause of Indonesia’s catastrophic 2015 fires, which burned through an area about 4.5 times the size of Bali and cost the country about US$16.1 billion, or about two percent of GDP, the World Bank said.
The blazes sparked calls for action, including a moratorium on new peatland concessions.
Government regulations adopted the following year banned several damaging activities, including burning and drying out peatland.
“Weak oversight and law enforcement in Indonesia allow the exploitation of peatlands to continue,” said Wahyu Perdana, an advocacy and campaign manager at peatland preservation non-governmental organization Pantau Gambut.
Fires still happen “almost every year,” said Rohman, a farmer in Bangsal village.
Like Lebung Itam, Bangsal is ringed by plantations on converted peatland.
Bangsal residents could once rely on vast wetlands to feed their distinctive buffalo, which dive beneath the water to graze.
Fish traps supplied additional income, along with small rice paddies.
Now, buffalo are hemmed in by plantations, while fish are affected by walls that keep the plantations dry, and fertilizers and herbicides flushed out by rain.
Plantation infrastructure prevents water from subsiding properly when the rains end, complicating rice planting. Then there is the seasonal haze.
“It is difficult to do anything” when it descends, Rohman said, with visibility sometimes dropping to just a few meters.
Everything from “economic activity to children playing and learning is very disrupted,” he added.
Rohman was one of several plaintiffs from Bangsal and Lebung Itam who filed a landmark lawsuit over the fires.
They said that three companies with nearby timber plantations on peatland bore legal responsibility for the health, economic and social impacts of local fires.
Filing the suit was not an easy decision, Bangsal schoolteacher Marda Ellius said, and alleged that a company named in the case offered her money and help for her family if she withdrew.
“I kept thinking that, from the beginning, my goal here was for the environment, for many people,” she said. “I chose to continue.”
This month, a local court rejected the suit, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing.
“The pain cannot be described,” plaintiff Muhammad Awal Gunadi said. “It was tough because we were facing corporations.
The group has pledged to appeal, and Bangsal’s villagers are lobbying local government for a new designation to protect their remaining peatland.
Healthy peat is “like the lungs of the Earth,” Bangsal resident and buffalo farmer Muhammad Husin said.
“Hopefully, if we protect nature, nature will also protect us,” he said.
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