fire prevention Archives - Resilient Landscapes

Fire prevention and peatland restoration: Community-based action in the digital age

Key messages

Peatland restoration efforts should accommodate the development of business models with specific jurisdictions of intervention to clarify target participants, expected investments and beneficiaries/users of environmental services.
Augmented participatory action research (PAR) emphasizes the importance of digital technologies and local facilitation for cost-efficient restoration and impact monitoring.
Actions on fire prevention and peatland restoration are connected to and strengthened by jurisdictional sustainability leadership and policies.
The essence of action research is positioning researchers inside the system and theorizing findings using a constructivist perspective.
Fire prevention and peatland restoration should focus on capacity, adaptation and resilience building for local actors on the ground.

Where Policy and Culture Collide: Perceptions and Responses of Swidden Farmers to the Burn Ban in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Catastrophic uncontrolled fires are a leading social-environmental challenge that now occur even in the humid tropics. In 2015 extensive Indonesian peatland fires commanded national and international attention and resulted in a ban on all burning in the country extending to traditional farmers practicing small-scale fire-based agriculture on mineral soils. However, the impacts of, and responses to the ban on these fire-dependent communities is not well understood. Understanding the mental models of communities exposed to environmental change and its corresponding policy responses can provide salient insights into the place-based experience of change to identify contested perceptions and serve to improve the distributional equity of associated impacts. We assessed the mental models of Dayak farmers in Kapuas Hulu, Kalimantan, in three distinct landscape contexts: i) oil palm (OP), ii) national park (NP), and iii) transition (T) sites. These locations enabled insights into how different contemporary landscape contexts and livelihood opportunities are related to experiences and coping strategies. We collected data using the Conceptual Content Cognitive Mapping approach in two communities in each landscape context (n = 24 participants per landscape), and 72 interviews in total. Results show that the NP and T sites were most similar, whilst the OP communities held distinct perceptions of fire. In addition to the agricultural value of fire, cultural and relational values are associated with fire use across sites and would be severed through fire prevention. Finally, we show that the burdens of the burn ban for farmers and forests were most pronounced in the NP and T sites where farmers are most reliant on traditional agriculture, have the fewest livelihood alternatives and least external support to fight uncontrolled fires.

FOREST /BUSH/ FIRE Management Guideline

The objective of this guideline is to equip field staff and partners with knowledge and skill of forest fires detection, protection, suppression and elimination so that risks of forest biodiversity and ecosystem loseis reduced.

Preleminary analysis of cause-effect on forest-peatland fires prior to 2020 in Central Kalimantan

Central Kalimantan covers an area of 157,983 km2 with more than 2,000 km2 of tropical peatlands, which is one of the buffer regions of Indonesia’s new capital government city. However, the sad story is the conversion of about one million hectares from peat swamp forests (PSF) to rice fields occurred in the mid-1990s, so called the Mega Rice Project (MRP). Since then, forest and peatland fires become an annual event due to high level of degradation under the climate change symptoms such the frequent of the El Niño event. In very strong El Niño of 2015, Indonesia has returned to the world spotlight in relation to the fires and the haze crisis. The most fire prone area was recorded in the iconic Tumbang Nusa, Pulang Pisau Regency and its adjecent areas. However, the thick haze had covered almost the entire province. There are the dis-adventages impact during more than two months. Therefore, this study was to investigate what are the causes and the impacts of this disaster at the site level. This research location was focuses on three regencies and one city namely Pulang Pisau, Kapuas, Katingan and Palangka City. The method was a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with key figures representing eight clusters of village communities. This method is also supported by statistical, hotspots and spatial data for additional analysis. The result are only two villages with very high average of hotspot and eight with high average of hotspots in Pulang Pisau and Kapuas Regency. Further, the FGDs in seven villages showed that there were three main clusters that caused forest-land fires, namely natural factors, human factors and village policy / regulation factors. The villages study that were affected by the fire in 2015 showed there were three main impacts namely on people, environment and capital. This result is a foundation of cause-effect factor for further Root Cause Analysis to find out the options for fire prevention and management in climate change mitigation efforts.

The linkage of El Niño-induced peat fires and its relation to current haze condition in Central Kalimantan

Annual forest and peatland fires in Central Kalimantan are reaching more than thirty percent of total fires in Kalimantan Island. Symptoms of climate change in the form of increasingly an extreme weather and global climate phenomena support the severity of fires occurrences and transboundary haze. This study aims to investigate the latest severe fire and haze condition in Central Kalimantan. Hotspot data was from 2006 to 2019. Visibility, Particle Matter Size 10 (PM 10) and Air Pollution Standard Index (PSI) data was from El Niño in 2014/2015 comparison to La Niña in 2016/2017. The results showed that the top incidents in peatland occurred not only very strong in 2015 but also weak El Niño in 2006. The most of dense hotspots density in the last fourteen years (> 50% of fires in the area) found in Pulang Pisau, Palangka Raya and Kapuas. The haze condition in Palangka Raya was getting thicker at the end of October. The dangerous of PSIs with PM10 concentrations of more than 500 µg m-3 occurred for 2 (two) months, from the end of August to the early of November 2015. PSIs in highest fire occurrences in 2015 is about 50 times greater than the lowest fire occurrences in 2017. Low visibility in 2015 was ranging from 200 to 900 m during the peak air pollution season. Thus, this El Niño-induced fires and haze in peatland area could threaten thousand peoples and cause harmful feed-back to the environment.

The role of social capital of Riau women farmer groups in building collective action for tropical peatland restoration

Collective action is important when the activities and costs of restoration cannot all be internalized by the government or when urgent maintenance is required beyond the scope of the restoration project. Collective action can be influenced by social capital. In this study, we examine components of social capital and the factors that affect them. Using key informant interview, household survey, and participant observation, we also identify the extent to which social capital is related to collective action. We found that women farmer groups have high social capital, which has led to strong collective action. Social capital in Dompas’ women groups is characterized by the norms of trust and reciprocity. Strong trust and reciprocity are driven by shared culture and values and supported by kinship. Social capital arises from and is reflected in the interactions between individuals in the group. It is naturally embedded within the community, supported by strong motivation and commitment, primarily to improve the family welfare. The social capital established influenced and drove collective action, which contributes to successful management of the women farmer groups’ action arena. This paper highlights the evidence of social capital and its relation to collective action in a case from restoration in the Global South. We suggest that for a restoration action to successfully mobilize voluntary, active participation from the community, the intervention should be designed with an emphasis on establishing social capital.

Developing business model with community groups for fire prevention and peatland restoration: a case study of Siak Regency

Forest and land fires are one of the main environmental challenges in Riau, that majority of its land covered by peatland. Therefore, the main challenge is to introduce fire-free alternatives to clearing agricultural land, while recognizing that local people lack the resources, knowledge, and technology on potential alternatives to zero-burning agriculture. A community-based business model for fire prevention and peatland restoration is urgently needed by making the community the main actor capable of generating value. This study aims to develop the alternative livelihood to support peatland restoration through Sustainable Business Model for the Community (SBMC) by applying Participatory Action Research (PAR). We conducted surveys, focus group discussions (FGDs), and field interviews as well as implemented Canvas Business Model (CBM) to identify the business component. Our finding showed that community groups were able to develop an agrosilvofishery business model that not only implement sustainable practices for land preparation without fire but also determined varieties of commodities that are ecologically and economically suitable for agroforestry techniques on peatlands. Hence, CBM is a suitable tool that helps in developing an integrated sustainable business model for community and can be applied in participative setting. CBM also ensured equity by identifying and agreeing on a cost structure and benefit sharing.

Community-based fire prevention and peatland restoration in Indonesia: A participatory action research approach

The vast majority of peatlands in Southeast Asia are located in Indonesia. They are currently classified as degraded and at risk of fire. Fire prevention and the restoration of degraded peatlands have therefore been part of the national government’s agenda for the last two presidential terms. With the immense pressure of anthropogenic challenges, interventions to restore degraded peatlands and prevent fire combine biophysical and socioeconomic considerations. This paper explores the implementation of community-focused interventions and participatory processes in fire prevention, peatland restoration and sustainable livelihood improvement in Bengkalis Regency, Riau Province. We used Participatory Action Research (PAR) and an Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to foster an on-the-ground and inclusive process for behavioral changes that result in not using fire in agricultural land preparation and to advance awareness of and participation in restoring degraded peatlands. Our findings reveal that PAR, with an IAD framing, can catalyze change. Four critical aspects are required for this: (a) demand for the intervention; (b) adequate political support; (c) community participation, leadership, social capital and local institutions; and (d) business models for sustainable livelihood transitions. This paper provides lessons on scientifically driven and evidence-based participatory processes for restoration.

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