Peat Moss. It’s drying out in Indonesia, making that country the third largest producer of Greenhouse Gasses behind the U.S. and China.
In the heart of Borneo, CO2 rises from the ground like steam. A vast and often smoldering layer of coal-black peat, formed over thousands of years from decomposed trees, grass and scrub, contains gigantic quantities of carbon dioxide, which used to stay locked in the ground. It is now drying and disintegrating, as once-soggy swamps are shorn of trees and drained by canals, and when it burns, carbon dioxide gushes into the atmosphere.
“Peat is the big elephant in the room,” said Agus Purnomo, head of Indonesia’s National Council on Climate Change. Dealing with it, he said, requires that the world answer a vexing question: How can protection of the environment be made as economically rewarding as its often lucrative destruction?
Fires have grown more frequent and serious. For centuries, Kalimantan locals have burned forestland to create plots for farming. But what used to be small, controlled fires have become fearsome conflagrations as dry and degraded peat goes up in smoke.
In 2006, Indonesia’s peatlands released roughly 1.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide -equal to the combined emissions that year of Germany, Britain and Canada, and more than U.S. emissions from road and air travel.
The Problem
Hadrianyani, who lives in Taruna Jaya, has two jobs. He clears peatland of trees and scrub for cultivation, a task done most easily by burning. This work earns him about $8 a day, or about twice what he gets paid at for his second job as a firefighter.
As long as it is in the economic interest of people to destroy their own land, then Climate Change will continue at ever increasing levels. So how do we help stop the destruction of the forest, which leads to greenhouse gas release?
Find out where the wood that you buy is grown. If it is grown outside of your country of origin, don’t purchase it. Sure, the guy at Home Depot may look at you a little funny, but you just might end up teaching him something about sustainability too.
Look at the ingredients of the things you buy. Palm oil is in everything from shampoo to lipstick. But there are alternatives products that are just as good.
It starts with us. It starts with the things that we buy. It starts with our consumption. Arm yourself with knowledge, purchase with forethought and help protect the world for people who are going to need it in the future.
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