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Peatland News

Title: Pantau Gambut
Date: 13-Jul-2017
Category: Haze
Source/Author: WRI Indonesia
Description: WRI Indonesia participates in an initiative, Pantau Gambut, an online platform that provides knowledge and learning about peatland to enable a meaningful public participation in peatland restoration.

Little is known about peatland’s capacity to store 75% of all carbon in the atmosphere despite it only covers 3% of the earth’s land. Indonesia itself is the world’s largest home for tropical peatland, the most-carbon rich of its kind. However, a general misperception about the worthlessness of peatland often leads to drainage and conversion into plantation and farming. WRI research finds that drained tropical peat emits an average of 55 metric tons of CO2 every year, roughly equivalent to burning more than 6.000 gallons of gasoline.

The degraded peatlands will also be vulnerable to heat and easily turn to fires. During the forest fires in 2015, 52% of the fires occurred atop the peatlands.

The fires that caused the loss of people’s source of livelihood, serious health problems, and financial loss to the country, has triggered the government to protect and restore peatlands. For instance, President Joko Widodo established Badan Restorasi Gambut (Peat Restoration Agency) in the beginning of 2016. Ministry of Environment and Forestry also issued Government Regulation no. 57/ 2016 on peatland ecosystem management and protection along with other follow-up regulations. Besides government, various local civil society organization has also long executed peatland restoration.

Despite the progress, society has not yet had easy access to a platform that can monitor the progress of restoration commitment pledged by the government and other restoration actors. Therefore, WRI Indonesia participates in an initiative to develop pantaugambut.id platform. Besides WRI Indonesia, Pantau Gambut team is currently comprised of Yayasan Madani Berkelanjutan, Kaoem Telapak, Epistema Institute, and Kemitraan. Pantau Gambut team also consists of Network Nodes (Simpul Jaringan) of civil society organizations in 8 provinces, from Riau, Sumatera Selatan, Jambi, Kalimantan Selatan, Kalimantan Barat, Kalimantan Tengah, Papua, to Papua Barat.

By combining technology, data, and crowdsourcing, Pantau Gambut offers four main tools, such as:

  • Pantau Komitmen: analysis on government’s commitments on peatland ecosystem protection and restoration, including barriers to realizing those commitments.

  • Peta Aktivitas Restorasi: Activity and progress on peatland restoration executed by the government, civil society organizations, and businesses.

  • Berbagi Cerita: Stories, opinion, or any information regarding peatlands written by general public.

Pantau Gambut platform is now available in its alpha version. The analysis, content, data, and information in the platform will be continuously developed and improved regularly.

Visit pantaugambut.id to learn more.



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