Opportunities and challenges for land use-based peatland restoration in Kayu Labu Village, South Sumatra, Indonesia

Abstract

Restoration of degraded peatland has proven to be complex and many activities that have been initiated in recent years have not had a significant impacted on restoring peatland condition. Revitalization activities that have been carried out in several locations have not been effective. Likewise, rewetting actions were often poorly understood by the community. This research aimed to analyze land use-based peatland restoration opportunities and challenges in Kayu Labu village, South Sumatra. Survey methods and interviews with the stakeholders were applied to collect primary data in the field. The results showed that although Kayu Labu has been designated as one of the focus villages for restoration by the Peatland Restoration Agency, the restoration efforts to date have not significantly impacted on people’s lives. The community has not widely known the implementation of the programs, and only those who were directly involved in the activities were aware of the peatland restoration program. Several opportunities are available to support the implementation of land use-based peatland restoration in Kayu Labu: the community has a strong willingness and commitment to restore their peatlands because they have suffered badly from peatland fires in the past. The community also acknowledges the loss of their livelihoods due to peatland degradation, especially for purun craftsmen, gelam collectors, and fishers. There are also opportunities from government and research programs to be implemented in this area to support peatland restoration. However, there are still challenges that must be faced: the increasingly massive expansion of oil palm plantations by clearing the peatlands, the lack of knowledge about peatland, and there is a general feeling from the community that without peatland their lives would be better off because they could grow diverse crops with higher yields. Therefore, capacity building, communication and knowledge enhancement, and partnerships are needed for the success of land use-based peatland restoration in Kayu Labu.

Community‐led peatland restoration in Southeast Asia: 5Rs approach

“…The abovementioned 4Rs approach aims to serve as a model for the formulation of the peatland restoration activities in Indonesia, although the recently published literature on Indonesia (Lestari et al 2021; Yuwati et al 2021), Indonesian governmental officials (IFAD 2021), and guidelines developed by Malaysia on oil palm plantation restoration (Parish et al 2019) still refer to the 3Rs as the guiding approach when presenting Indonesia's restoration efforts, evidence that awareness on the 4Rs approach is not sufficient or that the approach is not widely recognized by policy makers, researchers and practitioners. Nonetheless, the 3Rs and 4Rs approaches are the only attempts found in the literature at defining elements of peatland restoration interventions.…”

“…timber) transport and local community mobility have been reported in Central Kalimantan (Harrison et al 2019) when communities were not involved in the planning and implementation of rewetting activities. Another study in South Sumatra, Indonesia, found that rewetting activities (R1) undertaken by BRG have not had a significant impact restoring peatlands (Lestari et al 2021). These activities were often poorly understood by local communities, attributable to the fact that local community were not widely engaged in the activities.…”

“…Only those that were directly involved in the restoration activities fully understood and endorsed the rewetting activities. General feeling recorded from the local community was that their lives would be better off without the peat, because they could grow higher yield crops, often seen as a barrier to achieve optimal production or land use (Lestari et al 2021). Not only are local communities' awareness of the benefits of canal blocking necessary for the acceptance and understanding of restoration activities, their participation in canal blocking construction and maintenance as well as water table level monitoring are key for the sustainability of peatland restoration interventions.…”

Building knowledge management for better policy and strategy of peatland restoration in Indonesia: inputs from stakeholders

“…The updated data shows that the peatland in Indonesia covers about 13.43 million ha, distributed in four main islands, Sumatra/5.85 million ha, Kalimantan/4.54 million ha, Papua/3.01 million ha and, Sulawesi/0.024 million ha [2]. Tropical peatland is fragile and has unique physical, chemical, and biological characteristics that differ from mineral land with significant functions in hydrology, ecosystem, biodiversity conservation, and livelihoods [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. This condition put tropical peatland degradation in Indonesia as an emerging issue and the main challenge to sustainable peatland management.…”

Farmer's Participation Rate in Desa Peduli Gambut Program

“…However, research on the participation of farmers working on peatlands is limited. One of the studies on farmer participation in the BRG program showed that the program had no impact on people's lives (Lestari et al, 2021). Ideally, the BRG program grows and develops from the community and is carried out consciously by the community, and the results can be perceived by the whole community (Adawiyah & Ramadhan, 2020).…”