Restoring Indonesia鈥檚 peatlands to their natural soggy glory
| Sumatra, Indonesia
A picket fence encloses a single sago palm in Sungai Tohor, a village of 1,300 on the coast of Sumatra. A billboard to the right gives title to the bushy tree: the Jokowi Sago Monument. Jokowi is the nickname of Indonesia鈥檚 president, Joko Widodo. The tree was planted in his honor when he visited in 2014.听
Abdul Manan, the farmer and entrepreneur who drives me to the sago shrine on the back of his beat-up motorcycle, says it鈥檚 no surprise that villagers are proud of this palm. Sago is the most important crop in this part of Indonesia.
鈥淭his is like villagers鈥� savings,鈥� he says, 鈥渢o pay for the children to go to school, to middle school, to university.鈥�
Why We Wrote This
One-size-fits-all agriculture has robbed Indonesia鈥檚 peatlands of their moisture. Now the country is working to restore these historic swamps by embracing rather than fighting their boggy nature.
Mr. Manan himself owns a 12-acre stand of sago and a mill for grinding up its pulp, an edible starch. He produces packets of coconut-flavored balls of roasted sago and bags of sago pasta.
Just before President Widodo鈥檚 visit, wildfires had swept through Sungai Tohor and other parts of the province of Riau.听Fires have devastated Borneo 鈥� an island that Indonesia shares with Malaysia and Brunei 鈥� and Sumatra for decades. The incessant blazes reduce听oil palm and acacia plantations to ashes and incinerate dwindling patches of natural forest, home to orangutans and pygmy rhinos. Fires have exposed millions of Indonesians, Singaporeans, and Malaysians to toxic听air pollution.
Indonesia鈥檚 wildfires also release vast amounts of carbon dioxide (CO鈧�), contributing to global warming, embarrassing the Indonesian government, and impeding international efforts to slow climate change. Further conversion of forest to fire-prone industrial plantations 鈥�,鈥� President Widodo declared to an entourage of Indonesian journalists during his stay at Sungai Tohor. Give the land to听family听farmers instead, the president said, 鈥渟o they can use it to plant sago.鈥� Mr. Manan, the sort of small-time grower he was talking about, listened at the edge of the crowd.
President Widodo鈥檚 pronouncements may have helped to create a recent surge in sago production. It certainly raised the visibility of the cultivation of swamp-adapted trees, a fire-resistant form of farming dubbed paludiculture.听If widely adopted, paludiculture could make Indonesia鈥檚 land less prone to fires, protecting the health of residents and cutting off a globally significant source of CO鈧偺齟missions. It would also protect the long-term viability of farming on Indonesia鈥檚 coastal plains, where fires have been a persistent problem.
The dryland illusion
Hans Joosten, an ecology professor at Germany鈥檚 University of Greifswald, says Indonesia鈥檚 fire troubles can be traced, literally, to the dawn of Western civilization.
鈥淭he Western way of agriculture has as its cradle the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East,鈥� he says,听an arid region with infrequent rainfall.
The ancestral agriculturalists of European civilization domesticated plants and animals and developed tools and techniques for dry conditions. Europeans later adopted the 鈥渄ryland philosophy,鈥� spreading it, along with the empires, around the world. After conquests, they favored adopting dryland crops 鈥� potatoes and corn, for example 鈥� even where farmers also grew wetland plants.
Professor Joosten says this history led to 鈥渢he illusion that productive land has to be dry,鈥� even though 鈥渨etlands belong to the most productive areas in the world.鈥�
Even rice 鈥� a seeming exception, farmed in flooded fields 鈥� requires dry soil听for part of the year. It won鈥檛 grow in perpetually soggy ground.
Wetlands are common around the world, yet they鈥檙e seldom farmed before being drained. Most farms in the Netherlands, where Professor Joosten grew up, were natural wetlands before settlers 鈥渞eclaimed鈥� the land by drying it with its legendary network of dikes and canals.
Until the past several decades, waterlogged peatland covered in dense jungle completely rimmed Sumatra and Kalimantan 鈥� Indonesia鈥檚 portion of Borneo 鈥撎�. Peatlands are wetlands in which dead trees鈥� roots rot exceedingly slowly. The undecayed plant matter builds up year after year, creating deep, spongy deposits.
Only indigenous tribes 鈥� who hunted monkeys and indigenous pigs there 鈥� paid much attention to Indonesia鈥檚 peatlands.听The soggy jungle floor defied mechanized equipment, blocking industrial logging. None of Indonesia鈥檚 major crops tolerate their perpetually high water.
Peatlands store huge amounts of carbon 鈥� up to 100 times as much as the wood in trunks and branches of the trees that grow on them. Indonesia鈥檚 peatlands, which have accumulated for 15,000 years, are 60 feet deep in places.
In contrast to other wetlands, peatlands become highly flammable when drained.听In Ireland and other parts of the world, dried peat heats homes and fuels power plants.听Because of their immense volume, Indonesia鈥檚 peatlands generate huge听amounts of CO鈧偺齛nd continental-scale clouds of toxic pollution when they catch fire.
But the virgin听peatlands rarely burned. Peatland jungles are quite fireproof. Mr. Manan, the sago farmer, shows me why.
鈥淩oll up your pants,鈥� he says, tucking his into the cuffs of rubber boots.听Springy soil squishes noisily underfoot.
A few steps into the woods, he brushes away a tangle of palm fronds, revealing a PVC pipe sticking a few inches above the ground. He pulls out a long, straight dowel that, like a car鈥檚 dipstick, measures the position of the forest鈥檚 water table. Reddish droplets听鈥� tannin and other decay products in peat-color groundwater 鈥撎齞rip off the end, showing that the water table is only a couple feet below the surface.听Even during Sumatra鈥檚 dry season, Mr. Manan says, the combination of groundwater below and rainwater above keeps the soil sopping wet.
A fiery 鈥榳ake-up call鈥�
The tranquil preindustrial state of the peatlands ended in the 1990s.听Timber companies began running out of easy-to-harvest upland trees and turned their attention to the less-accessible swamps. Between 1990 and 2015, woodcutters harvested of the peatland forests听on Sumatra and Kalimantan, an area half the size of the United Kingdom.听The cleared ground was too soggy for dryland crops. But companies with government concessions听excavated thousands of miles of canals, dehydrating the soil. Then they planted oil palm, to satisfy the exploding global demand for biofuels and alternatives to hydrogenated oil, and fast-growing acacia trees, a source of paper pulp. Family farmers, with little capital and no relevant expertise, rarely made use of these cleared swamps. They鈥檇 always carved their garden plots from dryland parcels layered with fertile mineral sediments on riverbanks.听
The corporate plantation growers sowed the saplings of their own destruction, however. For years experts warned that the plantations鈥� drained peat was dangerously flammable. They also said that the desiccated wetlands听would听subside. In its natural state, peat is up to 95 percent water. Once dehydrated, it compacts and slumps year after year. Eventually the surface sinks below sea level. Unless protected by dikes and continuously pumped 鈥� methods employed in the Netherlands but impossibly expensive in Indonesia 鈥� the land becomes inundated with salt water and infertile.听
In late 1997 Indonesia suffered a scorching drought. As predicted, the peatlands burst into flames. The whole country seemed to burn. One estimate听suggests that of Indonesia鈥檚 peatlands ignited. Scientists piecing together what happened later calculated that the fires released 听in several months, possibly as much as the entire United States and all of Europe produce in a year.
The fires were 鈥渁 wake-up call,鈥� says Wim Giesen, a Dutch consultant with Euroconsult Mott MacDonald, who has advised the Indonesian government how to respond. Still, Indonesia continued draining peatlands carelessly for two more decades.
Conflagrations now recur nearly every dry season,听turning Indonesia into the of climate-warming CO鈧�.听
In 2015,听the smoke was so thick 鈥測ou couldn鈥檛 see the house across the street,鈥� recalls Laura Graham, a biologist at the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. Dr. Graham听works听in Palangkaraya, a city carved from peatlands in Kalimantan, where she monitors efforts to restore damaged forest. Pollution from 2015鈥檚 fires in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. The World Bank has concluded that it cost Indonesia .
鈥淭he good thing about the 2015 fires,鈥� says Dr. Graham, 鈥渨as that people finally stood up and said 鈥榃e can鈥檛 keep doing this.鈥� 鈥澨�
Nurturing a paradigm shift
In January 2016, President Widodo created the Peatland Restoration Agency, an arm of the government for coordinating efforts to rewet desiccated swamps. The goal is to dam and fill in canals across 2 million hectares (nearly 8,000 square miles) of peatland by 2020.听
What鈥檚 needed is 鈥渁 paradigm shift in thinking, going from crops that require drainage to crops that require rewetting,鈥� says Marcel听Silvius,听the Indonesia representative of the Global Green Growth Institute, an environmental group operated by 30 member countries.听Many peatland experts want the government to raise water tables to natural conditions, where water bubbled up above the surface of some land during the wet season and dropped to just below otherwise.听But this would end oil palm and acacia production on larger than Belgium. The government has split the difference, requiring that water tables be raised slightly but not so high as to endanger industrial plantations. Still, a shift from dryland agriculture to paludiculture has begun.
After touring Sungai Tohor鈥檚 sago groves and pulping mills, Mr. Manan drives home, showers, and changes into a fresh sarong, a traditional batik shirt, and a black velvet听peci, the fez-like hat Indonesian men wear on formal occasions. Seated on the floor of his modest wood-frame house, he serves a dinner of hot tea and fresh sago pasta smothered in greens and peanut sauce.
鈥淒elicious,鈥� he says in English.
Later that evening, a small cargo ship pulls up to a nearby dock. A crew of roustabouts loads it with 15 tons of sago paste from Mr. Manan鈥檚 mill for dealers in Singapore, 70 miles across the Malacca Strait.听
Sago, a staple for centuries in New Guinea and Borneo, is by far Indonesia鈥檚 .听Farmers 鈥� mostly small-timers such as Mr. Manan 鈥� produce about 50,000 tons of it a year, an amount that has tripled since 2013. In addition to being used to make sago pasta, it鈥檚 used in baked goods such as cookies and cakes.
鈥淭here鈥檚 potentially a huge market for it,鈥� says Mr.听Giesen,听the Dutch consultant. He says that for paludiculture to gain widespread acceptance, more wetlands crops with proven markets must be demonstrated.
鈥淵ou don鈥檛 want people too dependent on one or two products,鈥� he says.
Five years ago, Mr. Giesen, a botanist by training, compiled a list of 1,500 plants with known uses that grow in Indonesia鈥檚 peatland forests. He winnowed this down to 80 plants that have or have had 鈥渕ajor economic importance.鈥� The short list includes the trees jelutong, a source of natural rubber; galam, which produces a medicinal oil in its leaves, flowers favored by honeybees, and sturdy construction timber; and tengkawang, which produces quantities of nuts containing cocoa-butter-like fat.
Any of these plants have potential to replace swaths of existing plantations of oil palm and acacia. But in most cases the existing market for their products is limited or nonexistent.
They鈥檒l 鈥渘eed nurturing,鈥� says Mr. Giesen.
For instance, food and cosmetic manufacturers already satisfied with cocoa butter would have to be induced to consider tengkawang nut butter. Natural chewing gum makers would have to be persuaded to replace Mexican chicle for jelutong's rubbery听sap.
Moreover, Mr. Giesen鈥檚听plants haven鈥檛 undergone domestication that could increase their economic potential. Professor Joosten, who coined the term paludiculture in 1998, points out that the productivity of dryland crops such as corn has multiplied a thousandfold over the native species from which they emerged. Tractor combines, pesticides, storage containers, and shipping equipment have been engineered for decades or longer to lower the cost of bringing today鈥檚 top crops to market.
鈥淭he entire value chain has been optimized,鈥� he says. In contrast, 鈥淲e鈥檙e in the early Neolithic of paludiculture.鈥�
On the front lines of the battle to rewet Indonesia鈥檚 peatlands is Hesti Tata,听a forester who promotes paludiculture for the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. Like Ray Kinsella,听who turns a corn field into a baseball diamond听in 鈥淔ield of Dreams,鈥� it鈥檚 her job to tell family farmers that the if they plant wetland trees such as jelutong, demand will come.
It鈥檚 not always an easy sell. Farmers are not used to working soggy fields, and they fear there will be no buyer when the saplings she offers them mature. Sometimes Ms. Tata worries that her advice might lead them astray. The government might have to ban dryland farming on peatlands for paludiculture to take off, she says. Otherwise, 鈥渢here will be no significant increase in Indonesia.鈥� With so much of Indonesia鈥檚 peat going up in smoke each year and adding to global warming, we might all be worse off for it.
This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Frank B. Mazer Foundation, and the Energy Foundation.
