１) Research Background

In Southeast Asia, tropical peatlands extend to about 250,000 square kilometers, which store massive amount of carbon and water. In the past, most of the peatlands existed in the form of the peat swamp forests. Due to their physical characteristics, people lived at the margins of peatland areas and used the resources only in limited ways. As a result, the forests have been spared from development for a long time. However, over the last two decades, these swamps have been intensively exploited in order to create commercial acacia and oil palm plantations. As these tree species cannot grow in swamps, peatlands have been drained, creating extensive areas of dried and degraded peatlands.

The dried and degraded tropical peatlands create enormous impact upon the global greenhouse gases emission, local ecosystems, and people’s livelihoods and health. The dried tropical peat, which is composed of partially decayed vegetation or organic matters, emits massive amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) by being exposed to the atmospheric oxygen. The CO2 emission is dramatically accelerated when the dried peatland turns into a fire. The fire threatens the natural forests as well as the lands and properties possessed by local communities. Smoke haze from the fire, which contains PM2.5 (airborne particles with aerodynamic diameters less than 2.5 micrometers), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and other chemical substances, causes serious health hazards beyond the boundaries of the countries.

In Indonesia, great peatland fires burned 21,000 square kilometers of forest from July to November in 2015. During this period, CO₂ emissions from the fires exceeded ones from fossil fuel use in Japan during the whole of 2013. A half million people suffered from upper respiratory tract infections, and thousands of people, especially children, were afflicted with asthma. The haze also affected the people living in Singapore and Malaysia. In this situation, Indonesian government implemented a series of policies to prevent brutal exploitations and fires. Still, it is necessary to accumulate the scientific baseline data of peatland societies and ecosystems and assess the impacts of fire and haze, in order to clarify causal links between various factors and introduce the effective ways of the mitigation of peatland degradation.

２) The Project and Objectives

The basis of the Tropical Peatland Society Project was formed by some researchers in Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. They have introduced the practice of rewetting and reforestation in peatland areas in Bengkalis district, Riau, since 2010. This experimental site has attracted significant attention, especially since 2015 when fire and haze became very serious. Then, the project was adopted as one of the 5-year “full-research” projects of Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) in April 2017. Associating with Kyoto University, Indonesian Peatland Restoration Agency (Badan Restorasi Gambut: BRG), Riau University and other Indonesian and Japanese institutions, the project aims to clarify the entire process of peatland degradation and suggest the effective ways of rehabilitating the degraded peatlands.

The project takes multi-disciplinary approaches: Researchers who have various academic backgrounds join in the project. We especially focus on:

1. A)　
   Gathering social and ecological baseline data on peatlands and measuring the impacts of fire and haze.
2. B)　
   Implementing paludiculture (sustainable peatland livelihood activities) projects in wetland areas as a potential strategy for the mitigation of peatland degradation.
3. C)　
   Identifying governance structures and incentives, including strengthening the land rights of people situated on state land, which can support sustainable peatland management.

Our research objective is to examine alternative livelihood strategies while building/changing the institutions that can encourage people to restore and make sustainable use of degraded peatlands. Thus, these studies are conducted as trans-disciplinary action research, in which the researchers collaborate with local people, migrants, NGOs, plantation companies, and local and national governments, and generate solutions to the current crisis of peat degradation.

３) Contribution

Peatland environment is vulnerable, because the ecosystems are vulnerable to human disturbance. Societies around peat environment are also vulnerable, because most of such societies are geographically peripheral and politically marginalized. We investigate both of the social and ecological aspects, and propose many programs to transform these vulnerabilities. In other words, our ultimate aim of the research is to explore the transformability of environmentally vulnerable societies, and contribute to the global environmental issues by showing a model case of transformability of local communities.