Double Disaster in South Sumatra
Monday, March 17, 2025
Damage to peatlands leads to floods and serious fires. The government is busying itself treating the symptoms, not the roots of the problem.
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THE misfortune experienced by the people of Menang Raya village, Ogan Komering Ilir, South Sumatra, shows the poor state of environmental management in this country. Since the end of February this year, heavy rain has led to flooding that inundated their village. Their hardship did not stop there. After the flooding, the villages had to face the threat of land and forest fires.
Menang Raya is located at the western edge of the Burnai River-Sibumbung River Peat Hydrological Unit (KHG), a peatland ecosystem covering 87,300 hectares. The KHG is one of 36 peatland ecosystems in Indonesia, covering a total area of 2.1 million hectares.
Peatland, as a natural ecosystem, should function to retain water during the rainy season and gradually release it during the dry season. The peatland was perfect for protecting the people of Menang Raya from floods in the rainy season, and preventing drought and fires in the dry season.
However, the Burnai River-Sibumbung River KHG and the peatland ecosystem around it have experienced drastic degradation. The main cause of the damage is the conversion of land for oil palm plantations and industrial forests. This destroys the hydrological function of peat. As a result, the rainy season brings increasingly frequent flooding, while the dry season worsens the threat of wildfires.
A study released by Peatland Watch on March 12, 2025, titled The Sinking Wetlands, revealed the significant vulnerability to flooding of three regions with KHGs, including in Sumatra. Degradation of peatlands as a result of large-scale conversion changes of land use, such as oil palms and industrial plantations, has led to peatlands losing their natural ability to absorb rainfall. Congested drainage systems and massive canalization have worsened the situation.
The threat of wildfires faced by the people of Menang Raya village cannot be simply dismissed. On March 10 this year, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency warned that it is predicted that the dry season, which began in April, will lead to forest and land fires, especially in regions where there has been degradation, such as peatland ecosystems.
It is true that the government has established a Land and Forest Fire Mitigation Coordination Desk. But this approach, which only focuses on extinguishing fires and managing the impacts of disasters, is far from satisfactory. Mitigation of forest and land fires without addressing the root causes of the problem is like treating the symptoms without actually curing the disease itself—like giving pain medication to somebody suffering from cancer without removing the cancer cells that are the cause of the pain.
The root of the problem is in policies that ignore environmental conservation in pursuit of economic growth and food security. Large scale clearing of forests for oil palms and industrial plantations clearly destroys peatland ecosystems, which in turn leads to ecological disasters increasingly out of control.
It is also important to realize that policies that ignore environmental sustainability not only damage nature but also harm people who depend on these ecosystems. Without substantial corrections to these policies, environmental damage will continue to accumulate, and eventually leading us to an ecological disaster on a much wider scale.
