Local community representations of tropical peatlands and implications for restoration in Riau, Indonesia

Introduction

Peatlands are globally important carbon sinks that are threatened by recurring fires and land use changes for agriculture and forestry (Page & Baird 2016). Tropical peatlands account for a disproportionately large extent of degraded peatlands globally, 41% of which are in various states of degradation (Leifeld & Menichetti 2018). For example, peatlands in the Congo Basin and the Peruvian Amazon are threatened by rapid land use land cover changes, such as mining, agriculture, and infrastructure development (Dargie et al. 2019; Evans 2019; Lilleskov et al. 2019). In Indonesia, extensive areas of peatlands have been degraded through drainage and deforestation in order to support agriculture and paper and pulp production. To address the issue of peatland degradation, the Government of Indonesia (GOI) tasked the Peatland Restoration Agency (Badan Restorasi Gambut; BRG) with restoring at least 2 Mha of peatlands from 2016 to 2020, together with an additional 1.2 Mha slated for 2020–2024 under the new agency title Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency (Badan Restorasi Gambut dan Mangrove) (GOI 2020).

Involving communities living in and around peatlands, both migrant and Indigenous people (Page et al. 2009; Gunawan 2018) (referred to as “local communities” hereon), is recognized as a key factor in the successful planning and implementation of restoration. Local community involvement can yield multiple benefits, such as greater awareness and support, a reduction in environmental conflicts, lower restoration costs, the empowerment of marginalized groups, and the promotion of knowledge exchange through social learning (Reyes-García et al. 2019; Erbaugh et al. 2020; Ward et al. 2020). Involving local communities in Indonesia is also a matter of environmental justice, as many local communities rely directly on their environment for livelihood needs but are often disproportionately affected by environmental changes and development at larger scales (Erbaugh et al. 2020).

To date, substantial efforts have been made by the GOI, non-governmental organizations, and private companies to engage local communities in interventions aimed at revitalizing community livelihoods, suppressing and preventing biomass fires, raising awareness, and empowering different community groups (BRG 2016). For example, BRG established a Peat Care Village Program to facilitate the integration of peatland restoration into village development plans (BRG 2020). While peatland restoration in Indonesia is still in its early stages, some positive results have been documented, such as the increase in monthly income in 12 villages in the Indonesian province of Riau, on the island of Sumatra, through selling peatland produce (Terzano et al. 2022). The restoration of peatlands in Indonesia faces severe challenges, however, which include, at the local level, low uptake, community resistance, and land use conflicts (Dohong et al. 2018; Harrison et al. 2020; Ward et al. 2021). At broader scales, the conflicting interests of non-local actors, such as private companies, absentee landholders, (sub)district and national governments, and international institutions, pose further challenges to arriving at agreed upon restoration goals and coordinating restoration resources and implementation (Carmenta et al. 2017; Harrison et al. 2020).

Few studies have explicitly addressed the relationship of local communities with peatlands and their perceptions of peatland restoration (Ward et al. 2020). Perception has been increasingly employed in the study of issues relating to the management of natural resources, such as fire management effectiveness and solutions (Murdiyarso & Lebel 2006; Carmenta et al. 2017; Phelps et al. 2021), local community responses to canal blocking (Ward et al. 2021), and restoration decision-making (Aggestam 2014). Perceptions provide important insights into the legitimacy and acceptability of land use interventions (Bennett 2016), whereas divergence in perceptions reveals underlying differences in people's values and highlights potential sources of conflict (Shmueli 2008; Collier & Scott 2009; Carmenta et al. 2017). Moreover, there is often a time lag between the implementation of restoration and an observable socioeconomic and biophysical effect on the ecosystem (Martin-Ortega et al. 2017; Ota et al. 2021). Hence perceptions, which can be formed relatively rapidly in response to an intervention, can be used for the timely monitoring and evaluation of peatland restoration (Bennett 2016). Accounting for perceptions is therefore seen as crucial to improving restoration designs, ensuring transparent and equitable decision-making and communication, and increasing project buy-in.

Representations of the environment, which may be expressed through visions or images and culturally familiar metaphors of nature and landscape (Raymond et al. 2013; Muhar et al. 2018; Manzo et al. 2020), are influenced by and influence perceptions (Gobster 2001; Salomaa et al. 2018). Representations involve the incorporation of perceptions into mental models of how things are or should be and can shape debates about, for example, the use and management of a landscape (Buijs et al. 2011). Social representation theory relates to representations that are collectively held by a group of people, and highlights how, accordingly, different groups respond differently to information (Moscovici 1963; Buijs et al. 2012). In the current research, social representation theory provides a means of organizing and describing the different representations of peatlands among local communities in Riau province on the island of Sumatra, a part of Indonesia where peatlands are extensive and peatland degradation particularly common.

We investigated representations of peatlands in a part of Riau through adapting the empirical framework developed by Buijs et al. (2008) (Fig. 1). In this framework, representations comprise views on peatland management, also known as value orientation (Buijs 2009; Aggestam 2014), which is informed by perceptions of the benefits and characteristics of peatlands, and of human-peatland relationships. We adopted a broad definition of peatland benefits to encompass the various meanings and practices attached to the functions and services of peatlands, including potential disbenefits (Byg et al. 2017). Some of the peatland benefits were further categorized into ecosystem services to highlight how peatlands are perceived and framed by interviewees to support human well-being and livelihoods, taking into account both tangible, material benefits (e.g. production of oil palm) and intangible benefits (e.g. knowledge generation) (Jax et al. 2013; Schröter et al. 2014). Characteristics of peatlands (more generally termed “beliefs”) relate to the cognitive dimension of representation and are inferable from the metaphors and descriptions of peatlands (Buijs 2009; Byg et al. 2017). Human-peatland relationships describe the ways that community members relate to peatlands, such as their perceived roles in the landscape (Buijs 2009; Buijs et al. 2008). Together, these components influence value orientation, which in turn, shape and are shaped by representations of peatlands. This research explored the social representations of peatlands among local communities in the study area and the influence of social representations over the perception and interpretation of peatland restoration goals.

Methods

Study Site

The study focused on residents of a village (name removed to preserve anonymity) located on peatland that extends from inland to the coast of Bengkalis District, Riau Province (Fig. 2). Riau Province has been selected by the GOI as one of the seven priority provinces targeted for restoration; more than 90% of peatlands in the province are in varying states of degradation (Miettinen et al. 2016). The village was selected as a focal point of restoration due to a history of degradation and fires on and the diversity of actors and interests in surrounding areas of peatland. Multiple actors were involved in peatland research and restoration in the area, including local universities, international and national non-governmental organizations, private companies, and international development and research agencies (Arifudin et al. 2018). Annual average temperature and precipitation in the study village recorded in 2019 were 28.5 ± 0.5°C and 2,143.8 ± 84.0 mm, respectively (Zepner et al. 2020).

Homesteads in the village are concentrated in three topographically and demographically distinct hamlets (Table S1). Of the three hamlets, hamlet A was the first to be established and serves as the economic center of the village, owing to its location near the coast and easy access to a trans-township highway. Community members in hamlet A traditionally relied on fishing as their main source of livelihood, supplemented with low intensity usage of peatland resources (Masuda et al. 2016) and trade with neighboring communities and countries (Mizuno & Masuda 2016). Residents in the hamlet are predominantly of Melayu ethnicity with some individuals migrating into the area as early as the 1930s. Thereafter, starting in the 1990s, widespread clearance of forests combined with the construction of the trans-township highway and tighter restrictions on overseas trade, incentivized many individuals to turn towards the plantation-based cultivation of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) and rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) (Mizuno & Masuda 2016; Arifudin et al. 2018; Numata et al. 2022).

Two other hamlets—hamlets B and C—were formed farther inland through more recent migrations, with the majority of the population of Javanese ethnicity who migrated from northern Sumatra as sales of land were common (Arifudin et al. 2018; Syahza et al. 2021). Members of the migrant communities entered the area at the end of the 1990s with the intention of seeking new land to cultivate oil palm (Mizuno & Masuda 2016). Oil palm was chosen due to past knowledge and experience of cultivating the crop gained in northern Sumatra (Masuda et al. 2016). Homesteads in hamlet B are located primarily on non-peat substrate on top of a hill, whereas those in hamlet C are located on deeper peats. The extent of hamlet B partially overlaps with an adjacent acacia plantation, and this has been a source of tension over land ownership with the community until the government intervened in 2004. Given the differences in settlement history and geographical characteristics, each hamlet is assumed as a separate community.

Peatland restoration activities were concentrated in hamlet A, which largely followed BRG's framework for restoration activities (Arifudin et al. 2018; Syahza et al. 2021). These activities included rewetting via canal blocking, revegetating using native peat swamp forest species, reducing and preventing fires, and revitalizing livelihoods through innovative projects, such as the development of apiculture as alternative livelihoods.

Results

Interviewees cited different benefits and challenges associated with peatlands (Tables 1 & 2), views on peatland management based on their experience of past and current land uses, and attributes related to the biophysical characteristics of peatlands. Based on these components and in the context of published literature, we formulated five representations of peatlands: productive lands, marginal wastelands, degraded lands, cultural sites, and protected nature (Table 3). The representations ranged along two dimensions: peatlands as positive or negative landscapes, and peatlands as intensively managed, anthropogenic landscapes versus minimally disturbed landscapes (Fig. S1). The representations were not mutually exclusive in the sense that certain components can be mapped to more than one representation (e.g. peatlands' values for commercial agriculture fell under both productive lands and degraded lands representation) and interviewees referenced multiple components of the different representations. Many of the benefits and challenges associated with peatlands were similar to the goals and barriers identified for peatland restoration (Tables 4 & 5), suggesting that peatland representations contribute to the interpretation of restoration goals and outcomes.

Discussion

Tropical peatlands are landscapes characterized by a myriad of uses and values, beliefs, and social–ecological dynamics. We formulated five representations of peatlands based on the stated benefits and challenges, experiences, and descriptions of peatlands by local communities from our study site. In turn, these representations can influence how local communities interpret new policies and interventions and affect, to a degree, how local communities communicate and engage with restoration (Aggestam 2014).

Our study contributes to the growing literature highlighting peatlands as landscapes of constant change with co-occurring social representations (Persoon & Simarmata 2014; Pungas-Kohv et al. 2015; Flint & Jennings 2020). For example, representations of peatlands as productive lands, marginal wastelands, and degraded lands were shared among interviewees across all hamlets, reflecting common experiences of managing peatlands and social interactions leading to shared values concerning the environment (Kenter et al. 2016). The co-occurrence of multiple representations reflects the changing ways that communities engage with peatlands, which are influenced by a multitude of economic, social, and historical factors interacting at various scales. Traditionally, peatlands were viewed as marginal wastelands (McCarthy et al. 2012; Manzo et al. 2020), paving the way for development policies emphasizing the potential of peatlands as productive lands, in a process known as “undoing marginality” (Persoon & Simarmata 2014, p. 44). State-led transmigration programs involving the movement of large numbers of people into parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan, including peatland areas, have more deeply entrenched the productive land representation by casting migrants as laborers engaged in land development (Masuda et al. 2016; Manzo et al. 2020). By 2000, approximately 32.8% of the land in the Village had been cleared (Arifudin et al. 2018). The formation of the two migrant hamlets at our study site despite the limiting biophysical conditions of peatlands underscores the prevalence of the productive lands representation at the local and national scales.

At the international and national scales, contemporary narratives of peatlands have shifted towards a conservation angle, highlighting the carbon potential of unlogged peat swamp forests and their contribution towards global climate change mitigation (Leifeld & Menichetti 2018; Manzo et al. 2020). Globally, the representation of peatlands as protected nature gained traction following the establishment of international treaties on wetland protection, such as the Ramsar Convention (Johnston & Soulsby 2000). At the regional and national level, the ecological importance of peatlands, especially in Indonesia, became a focal point of attention in policies, media, and other outlets following the 1997/1998 peatland fires (Goldstein et al. 2020; Manzo et al. 2020). Our findings echo those of Miller et al. (2021) that peatland communities in Riau are situated within a network of information and respond to narratives at the broader scales. Local communities responded to these narratives by citing the importance of peatlands, sometimes borrowing scientific concepts (e.g. “biodiversity,” “O₂”), and describing peat swamp forests as “lungs of the world”. In particular, more interviewees from hamlet A, who have greater exposure to restoration activities and access to information, cited the climate benefits of peatlands. The metaphor of peat swamp forests as lungs has been commonly applied to tropical forests (Dove 2003). More recently, peatlands have been described as affected by the “Cinderella Syndrome”—unknown and undesirable—in the past, but which are presently cared for (Cheng 2015; Byg et al. 2020). Such metaphors highlight the many ways that humans relate to peatlands (Raymond et al. 2013) and demonstrate how local communities in Riau draw from multiple knowledge sources to inform their representations (Cebrián-Piqueras et al. 2020).

Another knowledge source influencing representations stems from the highly contextualized, local experience of living in and around peatlands. In our study site, peatlands are represented as cultural sites defined by local histories and cultural beliefs. For example, a fear and respect of wildlife in the landscape informed moral behaviors and management practices through taboos and stories. Likewise, in other parts of Indonesia and the tropics, the ambiguous relationship of local communities with peatlands through a spiritual lens of fear and respect has engendered conservation behaviors (Thornton 2017; Schulz et al. 2019a, 2019b). By engaging with the cultural sites representation, restoration can reframe local communities as stewards of the landscape (Byg et al. 2020) and reinstate culturally significant services.

Whilst it is still too early to evaluate the biophysical and socioeconomic impacts of restoration, preliminary understanding and engagement with local peatland representations may increase project acceptability and legitimacy and reduce barriers to participation. A prevalence of the productive lands representation and assumed economic challenges associated with restoration may have enabled market-based approaches to become increasingly adopted in peatland management in Indonesia, despite concerns over their long-term sustainability (Miller 2022). However, many market-based projects involving sustainable peatland management are currently still in the pilot stage. For example, the adoption of peatland-friendly biomass production, or paludiculture, have thus far been limited to trial plots (Tan et al. 2021; Miller 2022). Moreover, issues underlying market-based approaches, such as land tenure security, resource access and rights, or the distribution of benefits, need to be addressed to avoid further perpetuating social inequalities and environment degradation. Alternative approaches, such as those focused on collective or land rights, should therefore be considered in conjunction with market-based approaches for peatland restoration and sustainable management.