Form Submission: Participation Entry

Research Day Entry

Tropical peatland: the constant repurposing of imagination

This research deconstructs “resource imagination” as the underpinning for interventions on peatland landscapes in Indonesia. Historical reviews on canonical peatland projects and perturbation such Mega Rice Project (MRP), REDD+, 2015 Southeast Asia forest fire, and author’s field study in Central Kalimantan lead to the conclusion that tropical peatland has undergone numerous repurposing of imagination as resourceful landscapes, such as carbon storage potential, agricultural frontier, and future renewable energy. Indeed, despite the grave consequences of unsustainable peatland use and the high cost associated with peatland restoration, reimagining peatland is imperative to reinvigorate new interventions on peatland ecosystem. Therefore, the author suggests several alternatives. First, policy makers should be more susceptible towards the notion that the imagined potential wealth of peatland is prone to be single-visioned and ahistorical. Second, policy intervention should not render peatland problem solely technical but rather a wider societal problem. Third, policy makers should avoid a single vision of outcomes from peatland landscape to open a space for discussion between state policy and on-ground dynamic realities.