Developing sustainable and profitable solutions for peatland restoration

Over the past decades, a large area of peat swamp forests in Indonesia has been cleared of the original forest cover and developed as agricultural lands. Several important issues are associated with the clearing and drainage of peat forest areas, including loss of biodiversity, increased emission of Green House Gases (GHGs), and smoke/haze pollution. Moreover, the development of large-scale oil palm plantations did not always improve local livelihoods. We describe how the restoration of degraded peat areas through paludiculture and inclusive value chains development could result in sustainable livelihoods and climate-resilient peat areas in Indonesia. We illustrate this by describing business cases of seven valuable native peat swamp forest species which could provide income for local forest communities. An analysis of the sago value chain shows that sago cultivation has a positive contribution in providing economic benefits to all actors, including local farmers, although improvements could be made for better value sharing. Paludiculture has important environmental benefits in comparison to existing drainage-based peat cultivation systems. The combination of environmental and economic benefits is an important incentive to develop the paludiculture system further to improve current peat management systems and assist further peat restoration in Indonesia. The development and implementation of paludiculture systems, particularly species selection, should have more community participation to ensure the sustainable restoration of degraded peat areas.