A long journey to restore carbon-rich peatlands in Indonesia's Riau province

In restoring a peat dome, a key area is to return water to the parched soil, then revegetation

- : Shabana Begum

Science Journals Trudging through vegetation three hours away from Riau's capital, loose, dark earth and dry twigs crunched under my shoes.

Clumps of elephant dung were scattered across the area, a sign that a herd of endangered Sumatran elephants had paid a visit not long before us.

Five-year-old meranti and gelam trees - peat trees neatly arranged in rows - towered over us, and a line of saplings stood next to dug-up soil, waiting to be planted.

Holding the dry, crumbly soil in my hand, it was hard to believe that this was peat, which should be damp and spongy. But it was also difficult to picture the site as a former pulpwood plantation.

We were at a recovering peat dome under restoration in the middle of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) Group's plantation in Nilo district, a three-hour drive from Pekanbaru, the capital of the Indonesian province of Riau, on Aug 14. The plantation is run by the company's subsidiary, PT Arara Abadi.

A peat dome lies on an elevated area above its surrounding peatland. Domes are of conservation value because they store more carbon and water, while supporting biodiversity, according to World Resources Institute Indonesia.

"We want to bring back the area's previous ecosystem, but that would take about 100 years from now. So what we want now is for the ecological functions to per cent of the earth's land surface, they store twice as much carbon as all the world's forests combined. But peatlands have for decades been viewed in Indonesia as wasteland, eyed by agriculture giants and farmers for conversion into oil palm and pulpwood plantations, and farmland.

When turning peatland into agricultural land, drains are carved into the land to bleed out the water that gives peat life. The parched peat turns into a vast tinderbox, setting off fast-spreading wildfires when land is torched for agriculture and production, or even when a cigarette butt falls or lightning strikes the land during dry seasons.