11.11 News Feat Borneo MC 8/11/04 10:25 am Page 144 ALDHOUS P. Borneo is burning Vast tracts of Indonesia’s peat swamps have area about a third the size of Belgium — would be switched to rice production. been drained in a misguided attempt to turn Over the next two years,loggers felled the forests, while contractors dug some 4,600 them into rice plantations. Now the landscape kilometres of drainage canals, the largest of burns every year, belching smoke and hastening them 30 metres wide (see Map, opposite). Tens of thousands of landless Javanese were global warming. Peter Aldhous investigates. brought in to tend the Mega Rice Project, as the plan was known. Borneo’s native Dayak people could only itting in a small boat at the junction threatens to destabilize the global climate by watch as their forests and the traditional liveli- of two drainage canals, all I can see belching vast quantities of carbon dioxide hoods they had supported were destroyed. Sare walls of crumbling peat piled up into the atmosphere. “First we were colonized by the Dutch,now we to four metres high. On these parched I’m here to meet the scientists and envir- are colonized by Java,” says Suwido Limin, banks, nothing grows. In some spots, smoke onmentalists who are assessing the damage, whose team at the University of Palangkaraya, rises from the debris, while elsewhere and are taking the first tentative steps in the heart of the devastated area, studies the patches of yellow, acidic sediments taint the towards a solution by blocking some of the swamps. A fiercely proud Dayak, Limin was a peat. Overhead the Sun hangs orange-red, drainage canals using hand-built dams. It vocal opponent of the plan from the start. peering bleakly through a smoky shroud. will be an uphill struggle, but they hope to It’s like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. show that it is possible to stop the annual fires Sucked dry Certainly ‘apocalypse’ is an apt description that choke and char this landscape, and to The canals were laid down in a pattern that, for what happened here in the Indonesian return the devastated swamps to life. in Java, keeps the soil well drained and irri- province of Central Kalimantan,in the south Much of the Indonesian archipelago is gates crops with river water. But here in Bor- of the island of Borneo. This area was, until blanketed in a layer of peat — forest litter too neo, the peatland topography rendered it recently, a lush swamp forest that had lain wet to rot that has accumulated over thou- useless. The peat is piled up into domed undisturbed for thousands of years. But a sands of years. Over decades, these forests structures that rise to several metres above single, wantonly inept decision by Indone- have been slowly cleared and drained. But river level. Even a dictator’s decree can’t make sia’s former dictator, Suharto, changed all matters took a sharp turn for the worse in water run uphill, so the canals simply sucked that.Suharto wanted to turn Borneo into the 1995.Fertile land on the overpopulated island the peat dry. At the same time, the peat also rice bowl of Indonesia. But he succeeded of Java was needed for housing and industry, proved too acidic to grow rice. Suharto had only in creating a smouldering heap of ash so Suharto announced that more than one been told as much by the few local experts that blights the lives of local people — and million hectares in Central Kalimantan — an who were prepared to speak out. But the plan 144 NATURE | VOL 432 | 11 NOVEMBER 2004 | www.nature.com/nature © 2004 Nature Publishing Group 11.11 News Feat Borneo MC 8/11/04 10:25 am Page 145 news feature forest vulnerable to fire, and threatens the survival of Borneo’s last orangutans (see ‘The orang’s last stand’,overleaf). Most of what we know about Kaliman- tan’s peat swamp forest, and the conse- quences of its destruction, comes from projects based at Limin’s Centre for Interna- tional Co-operation in Management of Tropical Peatland, or CIMTROP. In 1993, Limin and Jack Rieley,a peatland ecologist at the University of Nottingham, UK, began surveying an area of peat swamp in the Sebangau river basin,south of Palangkaraya. Today, their field site forms part of a 50,000- hectare ‘natural laboratory’. You reach it by riding in a motorized cart on a rickety rail- way laid on stilts rising from the peat. Up in smoke Canals carved through Kalimantan (above) have This October, street life in Palangkaraya, Rieley and his colleagues — including his wrecked its peat swamps. Now locals are trying to the capital of Central Kalimantan, is accom- wife Sue Page, an ecologist at the University dam the waterways and restore the area (below). panied by the constant whiff of smoke. Drive of Leicester, and Florian Siegert, a remote- outside the city’s limits, and you are soon in a sensing expert at the University of Munich smoggy haze. There are few flames, but the — revealed the huge impact of Indonesia’s peat can smoulder for days. At one point, a fires on global climate. By combining satel- fallen tree blocks the road — the peat in which lite data and field observations, they esti- it grew has literally burned away. Standing by mated that the 1997 fires released 13–40% the roadside,my eyes are streaming. as much CO2 as a typical year’s global emis- NOOR YUS RUSILA sions from burning fossil fuels2. Burnt out The Sebangau swamp has been absorbing But this isn’t a particularly bad year. Things CO2 and storing it in peat for the past 26,000 really go to hell during the reversal of Pacific years3.Now,one of the planet’s most impor- currents known as El Niño, which brings tant carbon sinks is poised to become a major drought to the region. In 1997, the strongest source of the gas. Even without burning, the El Niño on record encouraged fires that cut prospects aren’t good. As soon as a swamp is visibility in Palangkaraya to less than ten drained, bacteria begin oxidizing the dried metres for almost three months. “Many peo- peat,releasing its stored carbon.“Fire hastens ple went to hospital with lung problems,” a process that is going on anyway,”says Page. recalls Alue Dohong, a local environmental- The key to reversing the damage is to raise ist. The city’s airport was closed, and traffic the water table, and to plant saplings in the on Kalimantan’s rivers — the lifeblood of the remoistened peat. My boat trip was with a area’s struggling economy — was disrupted team monitoring an initial attempt to do just went ahead anyway — buoyed by the lure of as boats collided in the smog. this. The Climate Change, Forests and Peat- lucrative construction contracts doled out to Fires burned out of control across lands in Indonesia (CCFPI) project involves associates of his regime. Indonesia for months. The haze extended the environmental groups Wetlands Inter- In the end, the Mega Rice Project yielded across southeast Asia, and cost more than national and Wildlife Habitat Canada.Given barely a grain. Its failure occurred against a US$4.5 billion in lost tourism and business1. US$3.2 million over five years by the Cana- background of economic meltdown and The burning peat resulted in the dian government, CCFPI is rioting across much of Indonesia. In Kali- largest annual increase in levels “The 1997 fires working with local people and mantan, there was an orgy of bloodletting as of carbon dioxide in the atmos- released up to 40% officials to prevent fires in both the downtrodden Dayaks turned on Muslim phere since records began in the as much CO2 as a Borneo and Sumatra — where settlers. Some returned to the gruesome 1950s (ref.2). typical year’s global large areas of peat swamp have headhunting practices of earlier genera- According to satellite data emissions from similarly been drained. tions, invoking the spirits of their ancestors analysed by Annette Bechteler, a burning fossil fuels.” In the northernmost of the in pre-battle rituals. The newer migrants student at the University of Mega Rice Project’s canals, brought in for the Mega Rice Project mostly Munich in Germany, the 1997 disaster CCFPI is building dams to try to keep the peat avoided the violence. But with no economic torched more than 2.7 million hectares in saturated. It’s a tall order, given that the dams incentive to stay,many fled Borneo. Central Kalimantan.And we can expect more must be constructed by hand, using local Today, Kalimantan’s tensions have sub- of the same. In 2002, a weak El Niño saw the materials plus supplies brought in by boat. sided. Suharto was forced to step down in fires return. Given that the peat is more than And at best,CCFPI’s efforts can only demon- 1998, and the Mega Rice Project was aban- 12 metres deep in places, it will burn again strate what needs to be done on a vast scale.“If doned shortly afterwards. But the drainage and again,each time drought returns. this model works, we can get more funds of the swamps has left a legacy of fire that Even what’s left of the swamp forest isn’t from other sources,” suggests Faizal Parish, returns each year during the dry season,from safe. The Mega Rice Project has lowered the who heads the Global Environmental Centre, July to late October.