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    Indonesian Peatlands Seen Playing Key Climate Role
    By Sugita Katyal
    Reuters

    Tuesday 28 August 2007

    Yogyakarta, Indonesia - To the average person, they are just ordinary swamps or bogs.

    But peatlands across the world are more than just simple marsh land: they are one of the largest carbon stores on earth and play a significant role in the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change.

    Not for long, perhaps.

    In recent years, experts say peat bogs have been stoking global warming through increasing greenhouse gas emissions because of massive deforestation and conversion into agricultural land and palm oil plantations, especially in Southeast Asia which accounts for a huge chunk of the world's marshes.

    "When you clear land, the easiest way is by burning. But that emits sequestered carbon into the atmosphere," Bostang Radjagukguk, an Indonesian peat expert, told Reuters at a conference on peatlands in the historic city of Yogyakarta.

    "In Indonesia, some 5 percent of 20 million hectares (49 million acres) of peatland has already been converted into agricultural land."

    Carbon Stores

    Peat is created by dead plant matter compressed over time in wet conditions preventing decay. Peat can hold about 30 times as much carbon as in forests above ground.

    The world's peatlands - a rich and fragile ecosystem formed over thousands of years - are estimated to contain 2 trillion tonnes of sequestered carbon.

    When drained, peat starts to decompose on contact with air and carbon is released, often aggravated by fires that can rage for months and add to a choking smog or haze that is an annual health menace to millions of people in the region.

    Dutch research institute Wetlands International estimates peatlands in Southeast Asia store at least 42 billion tonnes of soil carbon or peat carbon.

    Wetlands senior program manager Marcel Silvius estimates about 13 million of 27.1 million hectares of Southeast Asia peatlands have been drained causing severe peat soil degradation.

    Although degraded peatlands in Southeast Asia cover less than 0.1 percent of the global land surface, they are responsible for about 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, or close to 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions.

    "By 2025, peatland emissions will decrease because easily degradable peatlands would have disappeared altogether," Silvius told Reuters. "In Indonesia alone, 3 million hectares of shallow peatland have already disappeared."

    As concerns about global warming increase, environmentalists say the problem is more acute in Indonesia where emissions from peat, when drained or burnt, account for some 85 percent of total emissions from Southeast Asia.

    Indonesia is home to 60 percent of the world's threatened peatlands, but its marshes are being destroyed at an unprecedented pace because of massive conversion into pulp wood and palm oil plantations to feed global demand for biofuel.

    "Palm oil production on peatlands requires drainage, leading to substantial emissions of carbon dioxide. This renders it unsuitable as a biofuel, as biofuels should by international standards at least be carbon neutral," said Silvius.

    Mega Rice Project

    Indonesia has also lost a huge chunk of peat under a project to convert about 1 million hectares of peat swamp forests into rice fields in the mid 90s, dubbed the Mega Rice Project.

    The project deforested and drained massive amounts of peatland in Central Kalimantan, only to find the acidic soil underneath was unsuitable for rice farming.

    Today, it's a giant wasteland, a spread of dry black peat releasing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. The highly combustible material lights up in the dry season, choking the area in thick haze for a couple of months a year.

    "It releases carbon-dioxide, methane and a cocktail of other gases, some of them toxic," Professor Jack Rieley, a peat expert at the University of Nottingham, told Reuters.

    Now, as the world battles global warming, Indonesia's peatlands are being seen as a hot investment ticket, as keeping its vast peatlands intact could be a huge opportunity for companies seeking to trade off business-related carbon emissions for emissions reductions achieved elsewhere.

    Indonesia is pushing to make emission cuts from preserving peatlands eligible for trade in a new deal on fighting global warming at U.N.-led climate talks in Bali in December.

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    Additional reporting by Adhityani Arga.

 

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    Go to Original

    Government Deforestation Programs Get Shot in Arm From Overseas
    The Jakarta Post

    Tuesday 28 August 2007

    The Indonesian government's programs to tackle deforestation are getting a much needed injection of funds, with several developed countries committing to providing financial support.

    Forestry Minister M.S Kaban, addressing a two-day conference on deforestation in Central Jakarta on Monday, said the German government would donate approximately 20 million euros (US $27.3 million) to help Indonesia in its efforts to overcome deforestation.

    He said that the country would need the funds to finance reforestation programs and operations throughout the country.

    The two-day conference aims at collecting information to be used as a platform for further discussions to be held in Bali at the end of this year.

    The Bali conference, to be attended by top government officials, will be treated as a new benchmark on environmental issues, replacing the Kyoto Protocol.

    Dieter Brulez of the German Technical Cooperation, a subsidiary of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, however, said that the discussion between Indonesia and German was still ongoing.

    He said further technical discussions between the two governments would be held next month to determine the amount of assistance provided.

    The collaboration of the two governments started with the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by Indonesia in 2004. The cooperation has provided technical support throughout the country since then.

    "We help the people to understand that they can use the forest but still have to preserve it for the many generations to come," Brulez told The Jakarta Post.

    Indonesia has cooperated with many countries to overcome environmental problems. Dozens of countries and groups have supported the government by providing assistance.

    Edith Stelzl of the Hans Seidel Foundation said the foundation has established many courses that provide locals with skills to improve the environment.

    "We provide experts to teach as many locals as can be taught about how important it is to guard their forest and environment by themselves," she said.

    Country officer of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Atsuko Nishikawa, said that she had attended the conference to collect information that would be used by the JBIC to consider their further support for the Indonesian government.

    Indonesia's forests occupy 120 million hectares of land or around 65 percent of the country's land area. Unfortunately, deforestation has significantly cut the country's forest area. Currently, the high rates of emissions from land clearing, peatland blazes and growing industries have made Indonesia the world's third largest greenhouse gas emitting country after the United States and China.

    Executive director of the Indonesian Forum on the Environment Chalid Muhammad said he hoped the government would become more critical toward developed countries, and added it also needed to raise its voice about gas emissions produced by those countries, which contributed the greatest amount worldwide.

    Japan, Britain, Germany, the U.S. and Canada are five largest producers of carbon dioxide emissions.

    "We have to force those countries to lower their emissions as well as increase our efforts to combat deforestation. Don't let them think that we won't criticize them because they support us financially. Global warming has become our common enemy," he said.

    The World Health Organization estimates that climate change has directly or indirectly killed more than one million people globally since 2000, with more than half of those deaths occurring in the Asia-Pacific, the world's most populous region. These figures do not include deaths linked to urban air pollution, which kills around 800,000 people worldwide annually.