JAKARTA: President Prabowo Subianto’s plan to revive a national peatland agency has raised questions over whether it can protect the fragile ecosystem while government-backed land conversion continues in parts of the country.
After a four-hour-long roundtable discussion with 22 experts from various research institutions and universities, Prabowo announced last week a plan to establish the National Peatland and Mangrove Management Agency (BPGMN).
The agency is set to succeed the former Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency (BRGM), an ad hoc body tasked with restoring 1.2 million hectares of degraded peatlands and rehabilitating 600,000 ha of mangroves across priority provinces before its mandate ended in late 2024.
Unlike its predecessor, the BPGMN will report directly to the president with an enhanced focus on proactive fire prevention. The move comes as toxic haze from peatland and forest fires continue to blanket parts of Kalimantan, Sumatra and Papua, with smoke from fires in Indonesia also contributing to episodes of transboundary pollution reaching as far as the Philippines.
Indratmo Soekarno, a water resource engineering professor from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) who attended the roundtable, said on Monday (Sept 28) that the agency would seek to formulate a science-based policy intervention to curb recurring peatland fires.
“The main task would be keeping peatlands moist all year round,” he said. “The key is to establish effective water management, ensuring the soil remains wet and never dries out.”
Indonesia has one of the world’s largest peatland ecosystems, with around 24 million ha spread across 865 peatland hydrological units (KHG) in Papua, Kalimantan, Sumatra and Sulawesi.
But massive peatland conversion has long been documented across these regions, where water-rich soils are drained to make way for plantations and mining sites, turning them into highly flammable landscapes.
Stopping conversion
Environmental watchdogs have largely welcomed the planned agency but question whether it can succeed without stronger government efforts to halt the unchecked conversion of peatlands.
Peatland-focused NGO Pantau Gambut recorded that 52 per cent of peatland that received government intervention between 2015 and 2024 remained degraded and prone to fires.
The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) separately noted that business concessions occupying drained peatlands had also worsened the current fire season, urging the government to strengthen oversights of converted peatland.
Between January and August, at least 890,000 ha of land were burned across the country, according to independent forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas. Massive peatland destruction has also been associated with the government’s attempts to achieve food self-sufficiency by converting large areas of lands into rice and sugarcane plantations in Kalimantan and, most recently, Merauke in South Papua.
Against the backdrop of another severe fire season in 2019, former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo issued a presidential instruction formalising a moratorium on peatland conversion, which remains in force.
However, the regulation excludes so-called national strategic projects (PSN), allowing peatland conversion for the development of rice, pulpwood, oil palm and other plantations.
The establishment of BPGMN would therefore be deeply paradoxical if it continued to justify land expansion in ecologically sensitive areas such as peatlands, according to Pantau Gambut senior campaigner Putra Saptian.
“If this agency is given free rein to bypass ecological thresholds in the name of food security, it will not only fuel recurring wildfires but also undermine the country’s climate commitments and escalate the environmental crisis,” Putra warned.
Carbon emissions emanating from the burning of peatland-rich areas in Indonesia have also made the country the world’s top emitter in recent weeks, further amplifying the onslaught of the climate crisis.
Forestry professor Bambang Hero Saharjo of Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) also cautiously welcomed the plan, arguing that the mismanagement of carbon-rich peatland and mangrove ecosystems had long caused destructive impacts on the climate.
He, however, suggested that the agency should also be mandated to monitor and evaluate business concessions operating on peatland. “Therefore, the agency should not be serving merely on the behalf of the central government but also be directly involved in the control and management of the [ecosystems],” Bambang, who was also an expert with the BRGM, said.
The planned agency would fall under the direct command of the President, a move expected to cut bureaucratic red tapes and expedite policy implementation. “The presence of BPGMN is expected to strengthen policy measures and field intervention [in damaged peatlands], instead of duplicating the roles of existing ministries and agencies,” ministry spokesperson Ristianto Pribadi explained. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
