“Indonesia is clearing tens of thousands of acres of densely vegetated peatland for agriculture, releasing vast amounts of carbon that has been locked underground for centuries,” the Washington Post reported. ing. . ”
The country is home to half of the planet's tropical peatlands, and scientists say this unique ecosystem is essential to avoiding the worst consequences of climate change. Government leaders have halted efforts to protect peatlands over the past two decades, but three years ago, when the pandemic disrupted food supply chains, authorities ramped up crop cultivation and boosted Indonesia's reliance on peatlands. An ambitious land clearing campaign was launched to reduce the number of Expensive imported goods. The government plans to achieve food self-sufficiency by converting between 2,000 and 4,000 square miles of peatland, mostly occupied by environmental groups, into fields of rice, corn and cassava…but peatland destruction will require Environmental experts and activists say it's a climate issue, with potentially irreversible and catastrophic costs.
David Taylor, a professor of tropical environmental change at the National University of Singapore who has studied peatlands in Asia and Africa, said: “Recovering vast tracts of destroyed peat forests will take years and require huge investments in labor and money.'' is necessary,” he said. How can we achieve this on the timeline set by world leaders to reach global net-zero emissions? 'Nearly impossible,' says Taylor… Peatlands make up just 3 per cent of the world's landmass. However, according to the United Nations, peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the world's forests combined. When peatlands are drained, layers of old biomass exposed to oxygen-rich air break down at an accelerated rate, releasing carbon from bygone eras into the atmosphere.
Even worse, when the weather gets hot, unprotected peat dries out and becomes flammable. Already, environmentalists and villagers on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan on the island of Borneo are claiming that government-cleared peatlands are fueling even more intensifying wildfires… , naturally protected from fire. But once decomposed, they travel underground and feed on dry biomass yards beneath the surface, causing infernos that are notoriously difficult to put out.
According to the article, tropical peatlands are also threatened by development in Peru and Africa's Congo Basin. But there is a particular irony in the Indonesian government's project, they added. “Research shows that tropical peatlands tend to be too acidic to grow crops.
“Indonesian environmental groups such as Pantau Gambut and Warhi said widespread crop failures have been recorded in areas targeted by government projects. Yields of rice planted in some peat-rich areas have been That's less than a third of the yield of rice planted on mineral soils, according to the group's analysis.
