Presented by Adam Gerrand, Chief Technical Advisor, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, on the ITPC side event “Peatland restoration in SE Asia: Challenges and opportunities” at the XV World Forestry Congress, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 2 May 2022.

2. Background
Climateaction needs peatlands action!
FAO’s work supporting countries
Adam Gerrand, CTA Forest and peat monitoring, FAO Jakarta
Maria Nuutinen, PeatlandTechnical Lead, FAO Rome

3. 1. Status and trends of Indonesian peatlands
2. Why peatlands matter for climate change?
3. FAO’s work on peatlands
a) supporting countries through technical solutions and
capacity development
b) in Indonesia and sharing knowledge globally through
the Global Peatlands Initiative (GPI)
4. Challenges and opportunities
5. Conclusions

4. 1. Globally:
1. Peatlands are the world’s largest natural terrestrial carbon store
2. Only cover 3% of land area but contain twice as much carbon as forests, recent recognition
2. Indonesia has 36% of tropical peatlands (estimates 15-22 Mha), country with the
world’s largest area of tropical peatlands
3. More than half of Indonesian peatlands are degraded state as a result of
drainage, logging, conversion to large industrial plantations (e.g. palm oil,
pulpwood) & agriculture and fire, especially in 1990s, recent improvements
4. Drained and degraded peatlands:
1.are extremely prone to fire, land subsidence, flooding,
2.release significant GHG emissions from peat decomposition and fires, and
3.reduce the ability to provide ecosystem services that supports local communities’ livelihoods.
Status and trends of
Indonesia’s peatlands

5. Why peatlands matter:
climate vulnerability, social
& environmental impacts
1. Degraded peatlands are vulnerable to climate change and variability, fires
especially linked to dry El Nino weather patterns
2. Severe fires resulted in large environmental & socio-economic damage
3. Fires are increasingly concentrated in peatlands. The 2015 fires burned
2.6 Mha, 40% were peatlands, producing toxic smoke that covered parts
of Indonesia and neighbouring countries, resulting in more than 100,000
premature deaths and more than USD $16 billion in economic losses
4. Local communities suffer the most. Affects est. 15 million people, with
nearly 1 in 10 living below the poverty line.

6. Total Global Emissions - Declining deforestation one of the main success
stories
Source: CDIAC; Houghton et al 2012; Giglio et al 2013; Le Quéré et al 2014; Global Carbon Budget 2014
Indonesian
peat fires

7. GHG emissions from 1 week of fire on 1.6% of Indonesia’s
land area = 5-10% of Indonesia’s annual GHG emissions
Indonesian fires 2015
released over 11 million tons
CO2-eq per day, larger than
the daily fossil fuels
emission of all 28 EU
countries combined of
8.9 million tons CO2-eq.
With thanks to
Daniel Murdiyarso

8. 1. Fire occurrence and extent are associated with drought (weather
and soil moisture)
2. Re-wetting peatlands by blocking and back filling canals are
effective ways to reduce fire risks
3. Information on peat depth and hydrology (especially Ground
Water Level, GWL) are key for fire prevention and emission
reduction strategies
4. Climate change increases in temperature and changing rainfall
patterns will likely worsen future fire extent and severity
CIFOR peat fire research messages
(with thanks to Daniel Murdiyarso , CIFOR)
With thanks to
Daniel Murdiyarso

9. What can be done?
Indonesian peat restoration, 3R methods since 2015 fires
11
Historically peatlands mostly avoided, ignored, abused or degraded, only
recently getting attention due to fires and climate impact
Difficult access and conditions, resulted in poor monitoring data, poor
management and weak enforcement of regulations
New approaches since 2015 fires Gov’t set up the Peat Restoration Agency
What
can be
done?
How?

10. 1. Huge challenge to restore peatlands:
up to 90% degraded out of 22 mill. ha
2. Lack of good data and methods for
monitoring peatland restoration
- water levels is critical because
related to GHG emissions & fires
3. FAO used innovative radar satellite to
monitor peatland moisture & map it
4. Developed Indonesian capacity >100
people, 14 organizations to use tools
5. New maps better than few, scattered
field points. New maps every 2 weeks
https://trello.com/b/1RriK3jW/fao-peatland-monitoring-
ghg-estimation
FAO innovative peatland restoration monitoring
Few scattered
field points for
water levels
(dots)
New soil moisture
maps across
millions of hectares

11. FAO SEPAL system technical innovative “breakthrough”
Data from satellite images provide ground water level analysis over
large areas quickly and cheaply
Image: Sungai Kahayan Sungai Sebangau 1, South Kalimantan, (450,000ha ≈150x50km?)
More info https://trello.com/b/1RriK3jW/fao-peatland-monitoring-ghg-estimation

12. SEPAL results – 3
Animation: Ground water level analysis of a peatland
hydrological unit
GIF - Sungai Kahayan Sungai Sebangau 1, South Kalimantan

13. Key achievements in Indonesia
• Capacity developed through 14 agencies
and >100 practitioners to run the tools
• User manuals and training materials to support
independent use of tools available online
https://trello.com/b/1RriK3jW/fao-peatland-monitoring-ghg-estimation
English
Bahasa
Indonesi
a

14. Challenges need work
1. Institutional issues – over-reliance on multiple sets of complicated
regulations with limited enforcement
2. Agency coordination - low and mandates overlap or gaps
3. New Research and Innovation agency (BRIN) is still being formed
4. Small number of high-skilled staff and high turnover, reshuffles
5. Socio-economic work, long, slow and difficult, crucial for success
6. Designing effective and efficient incentives and avoiding capture
7. Better selected research sites experimentally chosen to represent
specific conditions, less political or spread across provinces?

15. Looking forward: many improvement opportunities
• Fire and degradation causes: understand physical & human/social
• Better understand conditions/thresholds for surface fires to
become sub-surface peat fires, poss. links to satellite moisture?
• Fire danger rating systems (rationalize the 8 in Indonesia!) alert
systems, and applications for reducing risk
• Subsidence monitoring and quantification of GHG and land losses
• Agricultural options: paludiculture and sustainable practices
• Restoration actions: effectiveness of landscape level rewetting
• Improved socio-economic data to target action for green recovery
• Support countries identify areas for restoration & monitoring
• Sharing data, tools and knowledge to learn faster and share easily

16. Thanks!
For more information
Peatlands and climate change
mitigation community:
https://dgroups.org/fao/peatlands/join
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https://dgroups.org/fao/peatlands/events/mo
nitoring/join
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