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Title: Country Report Indonesia Peatland Management and Condition
Date: 10-Nov-2003
Category: Indonesia
Source/Author: Liana Bratasida

The Indonesian peat land and swamp is estimated about 13 million hectares. With these areas, Indonesia has the largest tropical peat swamp in the world. Based on research, the Indonesian peat land has the largest biodiversity in the world, which covers the deepest peat deposit. Peat swamp has very important function in the area water system, has high level of biodiversity, and functions as carbon saver. Carbon saver function becomes very important recently since the climate change threats that shadowed human life. Peat swamp, besides as the habitat of many endangered species such as Sumatran Tiger, Orang Utan, and Sinyulong Crocodile, is also as the life resources for the people. There are some kinds of woods that have high economic value to be utilized by the community for supporting their economic life. At the moment, illegal logging, drying up, and land conversion are the main issues of peat swamp degradation in Indonesia. Those activities have triggered big fire disasters almost in each year, especially since the El-Nino in 1997. Peat fire gives big contributions to the releases of tons of carbon to the air and potentially increases the possibility of climate changes. In the period of 1990 to 2002, only in Sumatra, it is estimated that 3.47 billion tons of carbon has been lost due to fires and activities on peat land (WI-IP, 2003).

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