PEATLAND MANAGEMENT AND NATIONALLY DETERMINED CONTRIBUTION (NDC)

Peatland is a storage of huge amount of carbon. It is estimated that peat can contain about 6 tonnes per hectare of 1 cm depth. Overall, Indonesian peatlands stores about 46 Giga tons, or about 8-14% of the carbon stored in the world peatlands. It is this carbon content that has become source of problems due to its emission when burnt, and at the same time also become a potential solution if well managed, in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation. In our First National Determined Contribution submitted to the UNFCCC, 17% or over half of the 29% of the emission reduction target, comes from land based sector, which are mainly forest and peatlands.

The Indonesian NDC has targeted to restore 2 million ha of degraded peatland by 2030 with about 90% success rate. The strategy to restore 2 million ha of degraded peatland can be implemented by restoring 150,000 ha of peatland every year from 2018 until 2030. This strategy may reduce emissions for about 1 GtCO2e within 13 years from now (Muttaqin, Suryandari, Alviya, & Wicaksono, 2017). To be able to achieve this target, collaborative actions among parties such as Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Peat Restoration Agency, Research Centres, Universities, Local Governments, Communities and NGOs are a must.

The restoration of degraded peatland has been conducted through:

   1.      Application of peat restoration techniques that include water management on site level (operational scale);

   2.      Construction, operation and maintenance works, including the arrangement of canal blocking installation (rewetting infrastructure);

   3.      Application of cultivation according to local wisdom; and/or

   4.      Research and development, taking into account and adhering to the development of science and lessons learnt from international perspectives.

As the NDC requests for 90% success rate, peatland restoration needs to comply with indicators of success. According to Environment and Forestry Ministerial Regulation No. 16 of 2017 on the Technical Guides for Recovering Peat Ecosystem, the recovery of peat ecosystem function is declared successful when:

1.      There is no exposure to pyrite and/or quartz sediments under the peat layer at the point of compliance;

2.      Water table level in peatlands are less than 0.4 (zero point four) meters below the surface of peat at the point of compliance;

3.      The condition is better than the standard criteria for degraded peat ecosystem as specified in the Environmental Permit;

4.      The condition is better than the “degraded standard” of spatial analysis resulted from field survey activities or data analysis and information scale 1: 250,000 (one in two hundred fifty thousand) or the results of monitoring of the point of compliance; and/or

5.      The number of plants growing at least in a healthy condition are 500 (five hundred) stems/hectares in the third year.

The importance of peat restoration is also related to the prevention of peat fire that may lead to a huge amount of carbon released to the atmosphere. To deal with the fire problem, a Grand Design of Forest, Estate and Land Fire (Karhutbunla) Prevention in 2017-2019 has been developed by the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs, National Development Planning Agency and Ministry of Environment and Forestry to improve coordination, synergy and harmonisation between central and regional governments and increase the participation of other sectors. The scenario of the reduction of karhutbunla in the grand design uses two approaches comprising: (1) Ensuring that the 2.4 million hectares of peat land area under Peatland Restoration Agency are not burnt; and (2) Ensuring that 731 villages identified by MoEF as fire-prone villages are not burnt.

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