Indonesian palm, pulp companies commit to peatland restoration

JAKARTA — More than a hundred palm oil and pulp companies in Indonesia have pledged to restore a combined area of peat forest the size of the state of Connecticut, in response to government measures to prevent a repeat of the disastrous fires of 2015. Eighty of the companies are palm oil planters and 45 are pulp and paper firms, according to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. Of these, 49 palm oil companies and 31 pulp companies have had their plans approved by the ministry. Karliansyah, the ministry’s head of environmental pollution and damage control, thanked the pulp companies in particular for cooperating with the ministry since late last year to finalize restoration plans for peatlands that lie inside their leases. Those companies have agreed to block the canals initially dug to drain the peatlands in preparation for planting, and to rehabilitate nearly 5,200 square kilometers (2,000 square miles) of degraded peatlands. Together with the palm oil companies, they plan to restore at least 14,000 square kilometers (5,400 square miles) of their concessions that fall within protected areas by 2026. The restoration project is mandated by the Indonesian government under various policies, issued in the wake of the 2015 fires, to protect the carbon-rich peat forests. Land and forest fires have been an annual occurrence in the country over the past two decades, and peaked in 2015 with widespread blazes and a resultant massive haze, stoked in large part by the drainage of Indonesia’s vast peat swamps that rendered…

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