JAKARTA Indonesia has made strides in developing its plantation industry, catapulting the country into the world’s largest producer of palm oil. Its sprawling plantations produce more than half of the palm oil consumed by the global market. With the rapid expansion of palm oil plantations come a number of issues, from deforestation to agrarian […]
“Peatlands are dynamic and diverse and the underlying causes of their degradation are as complex as the ecosystems themselves,” said Nazir Foead, head of Indonesia’s Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG). He made these remarks at the fourth and final webinar in a series convened by BRG and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), which sought to explore and develop criteria and indicators for peatland restoration in Indonesia.
The country has pledged to restore over 2 million hectares of degraded peatlands in response to the U.N. Paris Agreement adopted as an effort to hold global warming in check. However, as Foead said in his keynote address, it is not a simple task. One possible solution to this complex endeavor is to measure progress through an appropriate, easy-to-use set of criteria and indicators that are locally relevant and internationally recognized.