Wrap up and way forward | National Workshop on Criteria and Indicators for Tropical Peatland

⁣Restoration of peatlands entails deliberate actions that initiate or accelerate the recovery of a degraded peatland to its former better state. Peatland restoration involves measures designed to change ecosystems that have been impoverished, damaged or degraded due to human activity, and revert them to a state similar to, or as near to their natural state as possible through the re-establishment of some of their ecological processes and functions. Peatland restoration in Indonesia is mainly
coordinated by a dedicated governmental agency: the Peatland and Mangrove
Restoration Agency or Badan Restorasi Gambut dan Mangrove (BRGM), known as BRG until 2021. A series of steps and actions that guide peatland restoration is
underpinned by strategies that target future sustainable land use and
management, social justice, livelihoods, governance and conflict resolution.
Restoration activities include rewetting drained peatlands (by back-filling and
blocking canals), revegetation of landscapes and revitalizing communities (by
supporting sustainable livelihood development) and avoiding land clearing by
fire. By 2020, BRG had coordinated peatland restoration activities in seven
provinces: Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan,
South Kalimantan and Papua. Long-term successful and effective peatland
restoration needs monitoring efforts that can inform design, strategy, site
selection and management approaches, as well as improve restoration efforts
through required adjustments. Availability of tested protocols or standard
tools to help assess the outcomes of restored ecosystems can help practitioners
determine peatland restoration successes and failures. Specifically, having
simple, easy to recognize and measurable monitoring indicators is helpful for
peatland restoration stakeholders. In this context, CIFOR – with support from
BRGM, Riau University’s Disaster Risk Study Centre or Pusat Studi Bencana (PSB)
and PT Rimba Makmur Utama (PT RMU) as well as consultations from several
national and international peatland experts – has developed a scientifically
robust, reliable and practical set of criteria and indicators (C&I) to help
assess the progress and outcomes of peatland restoration efforts. Issues that
are important for peatland restoration can be divided into four major
categories: biophysical, economic, social and governance. The C&I approach
aims to recognize and incorporate attributes from all four aspects to allow
nuanced understanding of all facets of a peatland, particularly assessing the
local context.



Wrap up and way forward | National Workshop on Criteria and Indicators for Tropical Peatland Restoration
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