Mega-development, Scientific Expertise, and the Remaking of Indonesia's Degraded Peatlands
Author: Jenny Goldstein (geographer.)
Publisher:
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13:
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Mega-Development, Scientific Expertise, and the Remaking of Indonesia's Degraded Peatlands
Author: Jennifer Elaine Goldstein
Publisher:
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 303
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThough an analysis of the Ex-Mega Rice Project site--a one million hectare degraded tropical peat swamp in Indonesia's Central Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo--this dissertation asks how and why degraded tropical landscapes become valuable. Some of political ecology's foundational questions address discourses, agents, and institutions that contribute to and enable environmental resource degradation. This dissertation proceeds with degradation as its starting point to explore how this site has enabled certain actors to claim value from degradation while reducing value for others. Using qualitative methods, this research analyzes conjunctures of development, science, and value in and through this degraded landscape. I begin with an historical account of how the Mega Rice Project was planned and executed, despite warnings from scientists that it would be an ecological disaster. I then explore the seemingly paradoxical economic, cultural-scientific, and political values of degraded tropical landscapes, and of wastelands generally, within global discourses of planetary climate change. In a departure from traditional conservation research in the natural and social sciences, I also broaden notions of what value and values are inscribed on and in landscapes without high biodiversity, agricultural fertility, and/or aren't obviously economically profitable. As the Indonesian state and transnational capital seeks to re-develop land classified as degraded, questions of how degraded environments might be refashioned are very much in play. Furthermore, Central Kalimantan--and the EMRP site in particular--has been the place of generative scientific knowledge about tropical peat soils as a global carbon threat since the late 1990s. I thus draw conceptually and methodologically from science and technology studies investigate how and why this scientific trajectory was located here and what implications that holds for future capital accumulation and livelihood strategies in this and similar sites.
Is Indonesian peatland loss a cautionary tale for Peru? A two-country comparison of the magnitude and causes of tropical peatland degradation
Author: Lilleskov, E.A.
Publisher: CIFOR
Published: 2019-12-06
Total Pages: 8
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKKey messagesIndonesia and Peru harbor some of the largest lowland tropical peatland areas. Indonesian peatlands are subject to much greater anthropogenic activity than Peru's resulting in high GHG and particulate emissions.We explored patterns of impact in both countries and compared predisposing factors. Impacts differ greatly among Indonesian regions and the Peruvian Amazon in the order: Sumatra > Kalimantan > Papua > Peru.All impacts, except fire, are positively related to population density.Current peatland integrity in Peru arises from a confluence of factors that has slowed development, with no absolute barriers protecting Peruvian peatlands from a similar fate to Indonesia's.If the goal is to maintain the integrity of Peruvian peatlands, government policies recognizing unique peatland functions and sensitivities will be necessary.
Vulnerability and Transformation of Indonesian Peatlands
Author: Kosuke Mizuno
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2023-03-29
Total Pages: 224
ISBN-13: 9819909066
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis open access book deals with restoring degraded peatlands to help mitigate global warming, to which SDG 15 and SDG 13 are directly related. The book analyzes peatland degradation and restoration of the Indonesian peatland ecosystem through the integrated lens of resilience, vulnerability, adaptation, and transformation. It sheds light on what constitutes "resilience" of the peat swamp forest, digs deeper into local knowledge in developing the studies on institutions, governance, and ecological conditions that support the resilience of the peat swamp forest to elaborate on the idea of transformation in today's degraded peatlands. While peat swamp forests may be resilient, they remain highly vulnerable. The book analyzes restoration efforts through rewetting, revegetation, and rehabilitation of the local livelihoods with the concepts of adaptation and transformation. The integrated analysis covers fieldwork of more than a decade and various aspects such as agrarian and social changes, biological changes (birds, mammals, and termites), carbon emission, water control, timber use, revegetation efforts, and the Indonesia Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) program implementation. It also employs the ideas of vulnerability, resilience, adaptability, and transformation based on expanded studies on peatlands and observations of and participation in multiple efforts to prevent fires and restore the degraded peatland by researchers, the government, non-government organizations (NGOs), private companies, and last but not least, the local people. The discussion includes the period of pre-degradation and several efforts at peatland restoration for a better understanding and analysis of the long-term peatland dynamics.
Catastrophe and Regeneration in Indonesia’s Peatlands
Author: Kosuke Mizuno
Publisher: NUS Press
Published: 2016-02-26
Total Pages: 510
ISBN-13: 981472209X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe serious degradation of the vast peatlands of Indonesia since the 1990s is the proximate cause of the haze that endangers public health in Indonesian Sumatra and Borneo, and also in neighbouring Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Moreover peatlands that have been drained and cleared for plantations are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. This new book explains the degradation of peat soils and outlines a potential course of action to deal with the catastrophe looming over the region. Concerted action will be required to reduce peatland fires, and a successful policy needs to enhance social welfare and economic survival, support natural conservation and provide a return on investment if there is to be a sustainable society in the peatlands. This book argues that regeneration is possible through a new policy of people’s forestry that includes reforestation and rewetting peat soils. The data come from a major long-term research effort—the humanosphere project—that coordinates work done by researchers from the physical, natural and human or social sciences.
Tropical Peatlands
Author: Jack Rieley
Publisher: Earthscan / James & James
Published: 2012-01-01
Total Pages: 300
ISBN-13: 9781849713221
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTropical peatlands are found mostly in South East Asia, but also in Africa and in Central and South America. They and peat-swamp forests store large amounts of carbon and their destruction, particularly through the development of plantations for oil palm and other forms of agriculture, releases large quantities of greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. They are also complex and vulnerable ecosystems, home to great biodiversity and a number of endangered species such as the orang utan.The aim of this book is to introduce this little known but important and vulnerable ecosystem in a way that explains its long standing interaction with the global carbon cycle and how it is being destroyed by deforestation and inappropriate development. The authors describe the origin and formation of peat in the tropics, its current location, extent and amount of carbon stored in it, its biodiversity and natural resource functions and key ecological functions and processes. Appropriate hydrology is the key to the development and maintenance of peatlands and the unique aspects of tropical peatland water supply and management are also explored. In the same vein the nutrient dynamics and budgets of this ecosystem are explained in order to show how complex habitats can be maintained mainly by rainwater containing very low concentrations of essential chemical elements. Past and present impacts on tropical peatlands in SE Asia are discussed and the need for restoration and wise use highlighted. Finally, projections are made about the future of this ecosystem as a result of continuing human impacts and climate change.
Global Peatland Restoration
Author: Hans Joosten
Publisher:
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 64
ISBN-13: 9780957057234
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhy Forests? Why Now?
Author: Frances Seymour
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2016-12-27
Total Pages: 389
ISBN-13: 1933286865
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTropical forests are an undervalued asset in meeting the greatest global challenges of our time—averting climate change and promoting development. Despite their importance, tropical forests and their ecosystems are being destroyed at a high and even increasing rate in most forest-rich countries. The good news is that the science, economics, and politics are aligned to support a major international effort over the next five years to reverse tropical deforestation. Why Forests? Why Now? synthesizes the latest evidence on the importance of tropical forests in a way that is accessible to anyone interested in climate change and development and to readers already familiar with the problem of deforestation. It makes the case to decisionmakers in rich countries that rewarding developing countries for protecting their forests is urgent, affordable, and achievable.
Towards Climate-responsible Peatlands Management
Author: Riccardo Biancalani
Publisher: Mitigation of Climate Change i
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9789251085462
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe aim of this guidebook is to support the reduction of GHG emissions from managed peatlands and present guidance for responsible management practices that can maintain peatlands ecosystem services while sustaining and improving local livelihoods. This guidebook also provides an overview of the present knowledge on peatlands, including their geographic distribution, ecological characteristics and socio-economic importance.
Ecological Impacts of Climate Change
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 2008-12-07
Total Pages: 70
ISBN-13: 0309127106
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe world's climate is changing, and it will continue to change throughout the 21st century and beyond. Rising temperatures, new precipitation patterns, and other changes are already affecting many aspects of human society and the natural world. In this book, the National Research Council provides a broad overview of the ecological impacts of climate change, and a series of examples of impacts of different kinds. The book was written as a basis for a forthcoming illustrated booklet, designed to provide the public with accurate scientific information on this important subject.
