Sunrise in Sumatra

In October 2014, local farmer Abdul Manan from Sungai Tohor, Riau, launched an online petition asking Indonesian president Joko Widodo to visit his village and witness the consequences of peatland forest fires. When the president visited on 27 Nov 2014, he personally helped dam a canal, and made favourable observations about the sustainability of the community’s growing of sago (a starch extracted from the spongy centre, or pith, of various tropical palm stems) versus large-scale industrial plantations. Later, a promise was made by the Minister that the concession of PT LUM would be revoked and that village forest would be officially granted to the Sungai Tohor community.

Since then, more canals have been dammed. The local community enjoys using the water for fishing/aquaculture, and there have been remarkably none or fewer fires since water levels were restored in the peatlands. The community says sago yields in their gardens, where the peat is wet, are better than in the industrial sago plantation which employs drainage.

Last year, fires raged in most of peat area in east coast of Sumatra Island and Kalimantan but no fire was detected in Sungai Tohor compared to early 2014 where fires had burnt down thousands hectare of forest in the area and other neighboor villages.