 and thank you for joining us. My name is Emeline Cheney, I'll be your moderator today. I'm the regional advisor on forest and climate change at UN environment. We have an exciting line of experts from C4, FAO, UNDP, UN environment and Indonesia's Ministry of Environment and Forestry here with us today. Each of these experts will give a short presentation and then we'll open the floor for questions from you all. For your information, the webinar will also be recorded so you can review and share it afterwards. And we also encourage you to live tweet or share your thoughts on social media using the hashtag pitlands matter and forests matter or tagging C4 or UN red. Today's topic is on pitlands in Indonesia and they're linked to red plus and climate change mitigation. We will examine why the conservation and restoration of pitlands is so crucial from a scientific, environmental, economic and livelihoods point of view. And we'll also discuss potential solutions for protecting pitlands and preventing the loss in the future. This topic is timely other than ever. I'm sure you will have seen in the news that due to the extreme dry season and despite substantial efforts from the government of Indonesia, the forest and pit fires are back. As of this August, the government has declared a state of emergency in the provinces of Riau, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, Jambi, South Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan where extensive pitlands are particularly prone to fires. And our first speaker today will address the science behind why pitlands are so flammable. But let me start off by giving you a quick idea of the link between red plus Indonesia and pitlands. So what is red plus? It's an acronym and it stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. It is a framework under the International Paris Agreement climate change on climate change under which developing countries can receive payments for protecting the forests as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Most tropical pitlands are forested and they store significant amounts of carbon about 20 times as much as other types of soil. So the destruction of degradation of forest cover on pitlands delivers a double blow of carbon emissions. One from losses, with losses from both the standing biomass the trees, but also losses from the drying and degradation of pit soils. Indonesia is a key country for red plus. It has the third largest area of tropical forest globally and is also home to about half of the world's tropical pitlands. This past February, no way announced that you would provide the first result-based payments to Indonesia as part of a red plus agreement that was signed between the two nations in 2010. This international recognition of Indonesia's efforts in reducing deforestation was really well-merited. Primary forest loss dropped by 60% in 2017 compared to 2016. And the government is planning to continue with this trend and has committed to reducing its emissions by 29% by 2030. This goal, however, will be difficult to attain if forest and pit fires continue to spike every few years. Hence our discussion today. To give you a better picture, emissions from the 2015 fire season in Indonesia have on some days exceeded the average daily emission of the United States. So with that quick background in mind, I will turn over to Johann Kieft, lead technical advisor for the UN Red Programme in Indonesia. And his presentation is on fire, the challenge to sustainable management of tropical pitlands. Over to you, Johann. Okay, Emeline, thank you very much for your introduction. And my presentation will be about fires. And I have to underline that fire is a key challenge to sustainable management of pitlands, both in the tropics as well as in temperate regions of the world. Fires have been common as well in the past in a North Western Europe, actually up to the time that even the city of Vienna in 1928 was blanketed with haze, the same as now Singapore's experiences. So as such, this is not a new problem, but it is a problem where I think we have to deal with because as we all know and as we all are aware of, fires is creating substantial damage to the economies and as well to the livelihoods and the health of people in Southeast Asia. And as you can see, the impact of fires is both in terms of environment, economy and health are significant. We talked in 2015 about 2.6 million hectares burned about an impact on the economy of 16.1 billion dollars, particularly to haze, disturb transport, trade and tourism. And also in terms of fiscal expenditures towards fires suppression and mobilization of military and police troops to put fires out. The health impacts are significant and most of these impacts for the people who are suffering from are irreversible, so that people will feel the impact throughout their lives. And as such, in cross-cooperation with the government of Indonesia, we have established a so-called desired state which we aim that actually we move towards a minimum or as possible as the targets of the government is zero wildfires ideally by next year or at least by 2025. And that means that we have to restore peak lands, we have health development and drainage of peak lands, we prevent these folks from fires and management and we need to look at community and we need to engage communities in those efforts to communicate with fire prevention and they move towards an end and so what's called an integrated fire management approach which brings all these elements together and that means that you have to create capacity to deal with fires across the landscape and engage all land uses as much as possible. Go and I will now explain why are fire, peak fires so bad? As Emily explained in the reintroduction is that you peak, you talk about you have fuel in the soil with the normal fires you don't have, you have mineral soils, mineral soils don't good but the peak fire is peak consist of carbon of actually of forest materials preserved on the water which if drained are then getting exposed to fire. And that means as soon as you get a fire in the surface on the surface, in the surface in the surface vegetation then it will lead to actually the fall over of trees. This means that the trees start falling over and then start burning and that will create and as we have talked about here about 150 tons of biomass per hectares that will then create actually a layer of fuel covering the peak soil. Okay, next slide. So and as these vertical trees now are laying on the peak on the peak soil then the sub surface peak soil that starts to burn and then gradually the fire starts moving into the peak. So the fires are moving into the peak. So submerges into the soil. Okay. And then it starts burning into the soil and that creates substantial greenhouse gas emissions. And as well it creates that effectively the peak disappears the peak disappears. So the land surface comes down. So and by coming to land spaces down and the fire intensifiers ultimately the peak fires ultimately create substantial carbon dioxide emissions and this fuel and accelerating global warming. And as explained in the introduction up to a level of the same level as the overall emissions of the United States as a whole on a daily basis. Okay. And then moving into the water and then burning in and then given that subsurface peak contains the large amounts of biofuel up to 1000 or over 1000 ton per hectare or more. And then so it's currently starting burning into and that creates that the land where the land subsides the holes created by the fires after the next slide. After he created the gaps then after the rainy season starts these gaps are filled with water and because of the water reaches the underlying acid sulfur layer of the peak which then turn the land and water acid. So the fire goes out, the fire disappears but after the fire disappears often the real problem start because you will end up with a landscape with very high acidity levels which makes for example, plantary growths and others more difficult and creates effectively the former tropical forest effectively into effectively baselands. And that is why we are now working together with the government towards an integrated five minutes and minutes approach which includes actually three elements increase the readiness. So have the systems and the warnings in place and the capacity in villages so that communities can if informed by cell phones so can act upon a fire warning and put cap fires out before they spread into the peak and then that is the readiness and that requires the response capacity as it becomes capacity includes the systems so that we have through what's called incident commenced system which means that in villages that people trained as incident commanders we can have the ability to call in airplanes in all kinds of support to make sure the fire doesn't spread and after then the fire is put out then we work towards recovery of the landscapes through a process like rewetting and P3 wetting, P3 restoration, restoration of vegetation and so on and that at the same time ensuring that the risk levels within the peak landscapes are being reduced and by doing so ultimately avoiding a future fire events like as in 2019 2015 and actually we hope now this year we already see that we already have been able to have some impact and we've been able to reduce fire risk and we hope to accelerate that trend in the future. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you Johan. We will hold questions until the end when we open up the floor. So I now would like to turn to Daniel Modiasso who is principal scientist at Seafall who will be explaining why peatlands are such unique and fragile ecosystems. His topic is titled where have all the tropical peat forest gone? Daniel, over to you. Thank you, Malin. Well, the big question is again where they've gone and why peatlands or tropical peatland matter in the battle of climate change. So, peat swarm forest is very unique ecosystem in the tropics because they serve a lot of ecosystem surfaces that you can expect including mainly storing huge amount of carbon in this ecosystem and they are kept and preserved there because the ecosystem is kept wet. So when you have peatland and it's getting dry that's the beginning of the problem. So it's very important to have peatland always wet in order to keep the organic material which are potential to be emitted when it is dry to be there. So, when the conversion is taking place, deforestation is taking place, degradation of tropical peat swarm forest is taking place. They usually followed by developing or establishing drainage canal in order to have the converted peatland to be manageable. So draining is one thing in the tropical peatland landscape and usually in order to make the land more arable to remove the biomass people put fire and that can happen very fast. So those carbon stored in many years will be released in relatively quick period and if your peat is wet then you will end up with smoldering fire. You have smokes, a lot of smoke and haze that will cause a lot of problem in term of health and also feasibility in the air traffic, et cetera. But if the peat is dry when the canal is established very likely one will end up with blazing fire like the picture in the bottom. So in order to look at how the tropical peatland can be very crucial and significant in combating climate change and we try to look at the amount of carbon release. Back in 2015, we went out during that big fire during the month of September and October we did measure what's happened and what is there in the haze. What we call fire emission factor was started to be quantified and we were impressed and amazed to see that every single kilogram of dry peatland it will release about one and a half kilogram of carbon dioxide. So imagine if you hold such a small amount this kilograms of carbon dioxide. So if you imagine the size of peat burn and the depth of peat burn, that can be a lot. And in this particular period in Central Kalimantan we measure during those two months of September, October 2015 every day around 11 million tons of carbon dioxide was emitted. So that's a large amount. Just to give you comparison or perspective that amount is larger than daily emission of the entire EU countries, 28 countries. Daily emission is about 8.9, almost 10. But that fire in Central Kalimantan was 11.3 million tons a day. So that's the scale of disaster when fire is taking place. So why then matters in term of combating against climate change. Again, we did measure the amount of carbon stored there. This is an example of deep peatland with a depth of around five to six and many places we also can find 16 meters depth of peat. The amount of carbon stored in every hectares is about 1500 ton. So that's about five times higher than pristine tropical forests in every hectares. So that's the potential of peatland if it is conserved to be able to mitigate climate change. A lot bigger. The potential is a lot bigger than tropical forests itself because as you can see in the graph the dark area is the amount of carbon underneath in the soil in the peat which is about 80% compared to the amount of the carbon in the forest. So even if tropical peat zone forest is removed you still have a large amount, large portion of carbon underneath. So again, if it is kept there and wet tropical peatland can be a potential solution for climate change. If you look at this landscape it's a contrast between degraded peat swarm forests in the foreground, it's very light green and at the background is the secondary not necessarily pristine, it's been disturbed but quite dark in the back. So one good thing about combining mitigation and adaptation in this kind of situation because it can get burned very easily. You can see in the foreground is the canal and there's draining canal, certainly if it is blocked you can put the water table back so that the soil can be moist enough to help the vegetation to grow when it is introduced and also at the same time reduce the emission because oxidation is avoided. So blocking the canal is one thing and then reintroducing tropical peatland species is another one. So restoring peatland can consider that in terms of adapting with the changing climate and at the same time also avoiding fire and also reducing emission. So all this tropical forest already disturbed and affected by human intervention. A lot has been converted and we are sure that this ecosystem newly established ecosystem will keep emitting be it acacia, plantation, oil palm or crop lands they're still emitting. So we try to look at this in order to quantify again the emission factor and this is very important for monitoring when you are talking about introducing for example red project. So one need to have the so-called emission factor for this particular land uses. In the left-hand side, you can see the emission factors for various land uses including the highest one here is acacia plantation followed by crop lands and oil palm. So somewhere around 70 ton per hectare emission that's happening in acacia plantation. On the right-hand side, this is different presentation it's a lifetime or lifecycle of crops and trees. We use this 25 years. The amount of emission is quantified there as ecosystem. Again, we need to monitor this in order to report what's going to happen if you implement project in converted pit land or compare with pristine and conserved pit land. So my colleague will tell more about how to monitor this especially land use chains and emission factor with regard to disturbing and tropical forests. Thank you. Thank you very much, Daniel. So indeed I now turn to Adam Gerand who is acting FAO representative in Indonesia. His topic is titled monitoring pit lands for climate impacts and benefits using ground and satellite data. So if you've ever wondered how you actually measure emissions stored in pit land you'll want to tune in for that one. Adam. Thank you, Emily and Pat Daniel for that introduction. Hello, colleagues here at C4 and online participants. My name's Adam Gerand from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. And as Daniel has mentioned, pit lands are very important for many things, many reasons. And in order to manage them better, we need to monitor them better. So I'm going to be talking about that with a particular emphasis on climate impacts. Next slide. So historically, pit lands have mostly been avoided by people. They've either been ignored or at worst abused or degraded. And it's only recently that they've been getting attention due to fires and climate impacts that's changed those attitudes and practices. It's really pleasing that the Indonesian government has now got a policy of pit restoration, what they're calling three Rs. This is rewetting, revagitation and revitalization that Daniel mentioned. Those things are really important but we still have some challenges in pit lands. They're difficult to access. The conditions inside the pit lands are wet and muddy. This means it's difficult to get people in there. It's hard to do monitoring inside pit lands. And it also means that we've got poor management inside the pit lands. There's weak enforcement. These are difficult areas to operate in. So we understand a little bit about why we want to monitor pit lands for these rewetting and raising of the water tables. We want to revegetate those areas and we want to create alternative livelihoods for the people that are living there. So we need to think about what we need to measure and to monitor them. One of the most important things for my carbon point of view is the biomass. That is not only the biomass in the trees above the ground but as we've heard from Daniel, there's a lot of carbon in the peat land soil and we've also heard from Johan that that can actually burn when the peat land gets dry enough. So we need to monitor the groundwater level. That's the depth or the distance below the surface of the peat where the water goes down when the canals are put in and the peat lands are drained. When that happens, progressively there is this oxidation or the loss of peat lands, particularly made worse when the peat lands are burnt and you can get subsidence from the peat lands that is effectively greenhouse gas going into the atmosphere. So we need to be measuring all of those things. The groundwater level, the subsidence, the greenhouse gases and ultimately if it gets significant subsidence or loss of peat land, if it's near the coast you can have inundation with water and that can actually lead to potential large loss of land. So this is a very important thing to be monitoring. We also want to be monitoring livelihood and economic information. I'm not going to talk about that today. I'm going to focus on the biophysical things for climate change. One of the most obvious we can do is vegetation cover, changing land use, deforestation can be measured and monitored through satellites. Many people have seen pictures of that. We can also do fire hotspots. Fires show up very well in satellites and there is an active program of measuring those things in Indonesia. In addition, we're actually getting much better at being able to do some other things with satellite data. Soil moisture data can actually be estimated by special satellites with radar data so that we can now get better estimates across the peatlands without actually having to go there. Next slide. So there are two basic ways and I want to talk a bit about the advantages and disadvantages of how to measure peatlands. The first of which of course is field data collection and the second one is remote sensing. Historically, field data has been the primary way of collecting peatland data. That used to mean going out to the field and measuring it manually. You can see people walking around here and peat swamps in this small picture. It's not easy work. Increasingly, we're putting automatic sensors into peatlands to measure things like ground border level, to measure greenhouse gases and subsidence. Those things are being done pretty with automated machines but most often it still has to have people going there in the field to do difficult peatland work, research work. This is hard, wet, dirty work. It's slow and expensive and in the end you only cover a very small area so it's got its limitations. That's where the remote sensing comes in because with satellites, aircrafts, drones, you can cover large areas very fast. We're getting much better satellites with increased resolution. Even LiDAR lasers are being used to measure peatlands. We can get very detailed maps now and particularly they can give us consistent time series of maps that can show changes, really monitoring the peat in near real time. And increasingly this data is very cost effective because agencies are making it free. Of course, the cost of the satellite is expensive but those satellites are being built for many purposes to monitor the world and the data is increasingly available free. Free data is not the only thing. You still need to access that data which is complicated. You need to process it with big computers and that requires skilled staff. But let me show you when you get all that data together some of the information you can put also on the web to make that more available to the public and to managers. This is an example of Indonesia's peatlands monitoring system called PRIMS, peat restoration information monitoring system and it's showing an area of Southern Kalamantan that has got huge areas of peatland in green. If we go through this, I'll also show you on the next slide, you can see the extensive areas of canals that have been put in across those peatlands. All of those canals are causing peat degradation, greenhouse gases drying of the peat and making them more susceptible to fires. With systems like this, people are now much more aware of how extensive those canals are and what a huge area of degraded peatlands we're dealing with. This helps the managers make better decisions and understand where to do the actions that they need to do to restore the peatlands. If we zoom in and have a look at one of those sites, I'm just showing you there, we'll zoom right in and have a look at what has been done in some of those peatlands. This map shows backfilling that is filling in of peatlands in the blue dots in a canal system there on the right-hand side of that vertical line. Those areas have been filled to fill up the peatlands, to stop them draining, fill up the canal, stop the peatlands draining. In the background, the layer of pink and blue is showing some of the satellite data that is giving an indication of the changes in soil moisture between 2016 and 2018. You can see in the right-hand side of that chart the areas where they've done the backfilling, the areas are bluer. On the left-hand side, it is pink and red, so we're still getting negative, drier peatlands. So we're seeing this as being a way to monitor peatlands, the restoration of peatlands using satellites. So the blue areas have positive change in soil moisture index, which is very promising. Last slide, please. So in conclusion, peatlands have huge potential. They have impacts on climate change, but they also have promise for restoring and absorbing more carbon. There are two basic methods for field measurements and remote sensing. I've indicated or hinted at some of the rapid improvements in peatland monitoring and how we're able to get better monitoring data from automated groundwater levels, new satellites, high resolution, and even products like soil moisture. All of this is leading us to faster, cheaper, large area peatland monitoring. This is very positive, but I still want to reinforce that we've got many challenges remaining to be resolved. Peatlands are still mostly undervalued, under-resourced and poorly managed. We need to build the research and the capacity development to manage those peatlands better. But I want to end on a positive note. I think there's increasing recognition of climate change links, the urgency, political will. There's increasingly here in Indonesia, particularly research being done on peatlands. The International Tropical Peatland Centre is being set up here in Seathore in collaboration with the government with strong ministerial support. We're getting globally collaborations through the Global Peatlands Initiative between different countries. So hopefully we will learn the lessons of how to manage our peatlands. I think for future, for peatlands, the future is promising. Thank you. Thank you, Adam. Thank you very much. All right, so let me now turn to Abdul Wahid Sital Moran, who is Senior Advisor for Natural Resources Governance at UNDP Indonesia. He's going to tell us about innovative financing for peatlands restoration and protection. Thank you, Emeline and colleagues and online participants. As said by the previous speakers, it is very important to manage the peatland and also to undertake peat restorations. Well, in order to realize that it requires sufficient budget, budget is very important to undertake those objectives. As you may know, the government already set our target to restore the degraded peatland up to 2020. It's about 2.4 million hectares. So this is the priority. And if it is restored, it will also create significant impact to other peatland areas. So this is the most priority. So I just want to give you a sense, in order to restore your 2.4 million hectares, there is a budget exercise done by the Peel and Resolution Agency. It requires about 10 trillion rupees. Or it is equivalent to $779 million. So it is quite expensive and that budget alone will not be sufficient to cover this budget. Therefore, we need to explore other financing mechanisms to meet the targets. There are several financing mechanisms that we can explore in addition to state budget. So I just want to highlight a few of them and then we can explore further through question and answer. So the first one is there is a potential to mobilize resources from the Islamic financing community. The framework is already set up under the Ministry of Finance, they call it the Green Sukuk. Under the Green Sukuk, it is very possible to use the money to do the peat restoration and peat conservation. So this is one source that the government can explore. And the second option is through ecological fiscal transfer. If you are familiar with Indonesia fiscal transfer instruments, at least there are two that we are very familiar with. The first one is the general budget allocation. The second one is specific budget allocation. For specific budget allocation, it is kind of this incentive mechanism. The poorer you are, the more you will get transfer from the central government. But there is also another in a fiscal transfer and this is very inoperative that the government of Indonesia has. They call it investment fund. So in Indonesia, if the province government has a good initiative to protect their peat land or do the inoperative things to restore the peat land, then they can have the investment fund. It is a positive incentive mechanism. The issue is it is not yet included in the criteria to get the investment fund now. So it is very important to encourage the central government to also include peat land restoration and peat land conservation. Also one of the indicators for province or province to get the investment fund. Of course, private responsibility is very important. And the minister of environmental policy can tell more how private responsibility is also a game changer to do this. Crowdfunding, blended financing and payment for environmental services and polluter pay mechanisms. It is in a law enforcement thing. Can also contribute significantly to mobilize resources to restore the peat land. So in the in the conclusions, I just want to highlight that resources is very important and state budget alone cannot cover all to do it and therefore we need to explore other mechanisms to meet the targets. That's all. Emily. Thank you, Chuck. Finally, our last speaker of the day is Mr. Jati Wichaksono Adi, Chief of Public Relations Bureau at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in Indonesia. Mr. Jati will will offer some final closing remarks, including a video on the remarkable biodiversity of Indonesia. Please, Mr. Jati. Hello, good afternoon. Prof. Daniel, Mr. Johan, Mr. Ucok and Emily and Adam. Hi, yeah. On behalf of the Ministry of Forestry and Environment and Forestry, hello, yeah. Indonesian has a commitment in Indonesia. I can say to the Indonesian has ratified Paris Agreement under the law number 16 at 2016 to ensure our commitment for sustainable forest and peat management and to reduce carbon emission under IDD plus scheme. And Indonesia has put in place IDD plus infrastructure policies of IDD national strategy, frail, and FMS, and successive guard information system plus monitoring, reporting, and verification system. And today, we are on the finalized step to the making result of the base payment reality. And Indonesia has established and well-run the national strategy system on climate change called an SCC to gather information on all IDD plus related activities on climate change mitigation and adaptation. The data is represented to ensure transparency and easy to understand by multi-stakeholders. And in progress, the annual emission reduction from forest and peat during the period of 2002-2060 is 70900 giga CO2 equivalent. If the emission from the peat fire is taken out, the average rate would be 46035 gigaton CO2 equivalent, which contributes from the composition of annual rate of 304377 gigaton CO2 equivalent. The significant improvement made a fire mitigation and response compared to the 2016 emission reduction from peat fire has significant drop from to 712,000 gigaton to 2015 to 90,000 gigaton CO2 equivalent. And in 2017, a peat fire emission is on average 12,000 gigaton CO2 equivalent. The government has issued a ministerial decree to protect and manage peat ecosystem in 2015-2040 with a further revised in 2016. Maybe the embassy emphasized on the peat function as carbon storage and to conserve biodiversity. And new paradigm, social forestry is a flagship program in ensure to the community active participation on sustainable forest management. The social forestry is to make sure to the forest management unit or KAPEHA in our future FMU or forest management unit now as KAPEHA, Satuan Pengolaan Hutan, which have three types for KAPEAP, forest production for KAPEHAL for forest protection forest and KAPEHAK for conservation forest. And a public private partnership through the various means, one of them is engaging private sector as restoration ecosystem partners. And media as co-partner in ensuring public engagement hurts and taken into consideration on all ministry of environment and forestry program. Yeah, I think enough. Thank you, Emily. Thank you, thank you. I understand you have a video, the ministry has made that you would like to be shown so I'll ask our colleagues to show the video now. Indonesia is one of the largest archipelagic countries in the world, with more than 17,000 islands that spread over an area of more than 2 million kilometers squares. Indonesia is host to several unique ecosystems, containing a large number of diverse species. At least 10% of the world's flowering species, which counts to over 25,000 species, flourish in Indonesia. There are also 12% of the world's mammals, 16% of reptiles, 17% of birds, 6% of amphibians, and over 45% of fishes, all of which are parts of the nation slash biodiversity. In order to preserve its biodiversity, which also contributes hugely to the world, Indonesia has taken significant steps in accordance to the national and global target on biodiversity framework. The government has allocated more than 500 units of protected areas spread throughout the country, with the total coverage area of 22 million hectares terrestrial and 20 million marine protected area. Because of its uniqueness and universal values, six protected areas are recognized as world heritage sites, 16 biosphere reserves, seven Ramsor sites, and seven ASEAN heritage sites. Many studies and research has also been conducted to identify plants and animals to assess their potential uses for medicine, food, energy, and bio-control for chemical hazard. Some community-driven activities such as ecotourism has also contributed to the effort to preserve Indonesia's biodiversity, which also encouraged cooperation among local stakeholders. The results are heartening. By 2019, Indonesia has been able to increase the population of endemic and priority species. Communities have also enjoyed benefits from this improved environment through ecotourism, environmental services, and other significant conditions, which contribute to their quality of life as a whole. There is little doubt that Indonesia's vast biodiversity plays a hugely significant role in reducing the impacts of climate change. By preserving its biodiversity and its ecosystems, Indonesia can help support the entire planet's sustainability and ensure a better future for all humankind. Okay, with this, I'd like to thank you for your presentations and also thank everyone for their kind attention. We will now open the floor to questions, starting with those in the audience and the C4 offices. For those joining us online, I'll be asking you in a few minutes to type your questions in the chat box, and I'll pick up the questions from there. And if you could please indicate who you're addressing the question to, that would be useful. On that note, I also wanted to indicate that we have another expert in the audience, Yves Le Monnier, who is C4 senior scientist specializing in ecology and mapping. So if you have questions in particular on the mapping related to the fire pitlands or red plants in general, you can also send your question to him. So okay, over to those in C4 to pick up a couple of questions. Maybe we'll take two questions from the audience, please. Well, I have a question for you. When you list down the potential financial scheme, what are the most accessible and already been implemented so far with regard to climate change from the list you had, including Sukuk and other things? Well, thank you, Daniel, for your questions. And I will also answer these questions from Jan Peters. The question is, are there any thoughts about using carbon credit schemes for financing, right? So, Daniel, among the financing mechanisms, private responsibility has been implemented because there is a request from the government, from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, for private sector to also undertake the pit research in their constitutional area. So, private responsibility. A concrete question is, which one is accessible and who is using that? Well, if I may answer, Islamic financing is the most accessible. Islamic financing is the most accessible because the framework is already there and the government is already issuing Sukuk every year. Well, it is up to Ministry whether they want to use Sukuk or not to finance the pit restoration. So, there is nobody using it so far? So, for pit restoration, it's not yet. For pit restoration, it's not yet, but for conservation, for national park, they already access that. Who is using it? Ministry of Environment and Forestry, one of the Ministry already used the Sukuk, the green Sukuk. I was thinking of private sector or something like that, no? Well, this is the sovereign Sukuk. This is the sovereign Sukuk. It is not private Sukuk. Well, it is also possible in our private sector to issue Sukuk to finance their activity to restore the pit areas. So, it is possible. Okay, thank you very much. I see that questions are already piling up in the question box. Thank you so much. I'm taking note of all of them. Just before we get to them, I'll now pick a question from the audience. Great. Thanks so much for the fantastic webinar. I'm Amy Dushala, a scientist here at C4 and I just have a question actually for the two people sitting in the room here who are focusing a little bit more on the research and monitoring side and I'm just wondering, you know, sort of given a bit of the crisis state of peatland conservation, the fires that are happening now, if you had an unlimited amount of funds, where would you target those funds in terms of critical peatland research and critical monitoring research? If we follow the pattern that BRG, for example, is using the triple R, I think the third R would be the most immediate and impactful way to do. That's the revitalization of the local livelihood, including alternative of livelihood. That would be, you know, straightforward and measurable in terms of avoiding further deforestation and degradation on training peatland and also this will have a long-term impact if one can really demonstrate the result of their intervention. Thanks for the question. Amy, from my side, I think in terms of the topics, I would have, I support Daniel's view on the socioeconomic side that's very much needed. We do need to provide an alternative livelihood for the people living and working around the peatlands. Those are the people that are using fire for their own subsistence livelihoods in many cases and we need to help them change their practices by giving them an alternative. But I think we need to be doing more than just one thing. We need to be doing multiple things. So at the same time as doing those programs, if we had unlimited funds, the activities like rewetting the active work that's being done on that is really important and we should be doing that at the same time as helping people move away from those practices, the damaging practices. Blocking the canals and filling them up and getting water back into those peatlands is one of the most important things we can do to stop the fires. In terms of places to where to do it, it's clear to me that Indonesia is the hotspot globally. It's also the place where there is most political will, most interest and focus. So it's clearly a good place to start. We also should be looking at other countries that are before they make these same kind of past practices and open up their peatlands before they realize how difficult it is. And we've been doing that through the Global Peatlands Initiative by bringing other countries here. So sharing the lessons learned and experiences and Indonesia and the Minister environment and forest herself is very keen on that, sharing that information with other countries to avoid bad practices occurring on other peatlands elsewhere. Thanks. Thank you. On the note, we have a question from Lok Sapkota, which I think would be well answered by Johan and Mr Jatti. The question is, in light of climate change, is there any temporal change, in terms of seasonal change in peatland fire, are there any spatial patterns of peatland fire in relation to management? Social forestry was mentioned as an approach and this person is interested to know if there has made a difference in dealing with peatland fire. So Johan, would you like to answer that question? Yeah, of course. I can thank you for your question. And yeah, I think we have to underline that in the wild, even in Southeast Asia, it is of course mainly Indonesia problem, but recently saw substantial peatland fires in southern Thailand and this shows as well the sensitivity. And indeed, by clearing peatland forest, you create changes in the microclimates which will lead to more, to further dry conditions, and also really a dry out of the top soil and this given that the top soil consists mainly of organic forest materials, thus higher chances of more change of fires. So So in nature, if you look at natural circumstances, you don't see, now there are expectations, but you don't hardly see fires in intact tropical, in intact tropical, in intact tropical primary peak forest. So as soon as you remove the, as soon as you remove the forest cover, you will initiate the process of also besides global climate change also of local microclimate changes which will indeed lead to more chances in forest and that will also follow a special distribution of fires. Thank you. Mr. Jatti, would you like, since you mentioned social forestry in your presentation, would you like to add something? Sorry, you're on mute. Social forestry, until now, ministry, environment and forestry has issued a certificate for three million hectares for surrounding people from forests, an indigenous community in on surrounding the forest. And the team in the ministry of forestry has prepared to the social forestry make a more until five million, five million in the end of 2019, yeah, and all the community in the surrounding forest will be responsible for the forest fire inside the community fire brigade or self-support to the forest fire combating, yeah, yes, and Mangala Agni is under control for the climate change should be stand by in the side by side for the control with hotspot monitoring in all of the vulnerable areas in seven provinces in Indonesia. Thank you very much, Mr. Jatti. Thank you. Okay, another question we've received from our colleagues of the Recoct Center for Forests for People and Forests, sorry, they are interested in learning about the integrated management of between landscapes and, and, you know, recognizing that there is competition, competing demands for water, they'd like to learn more about how to develop and implement pink one landscape integrated management for both biodiversity and livelihood development. So if any of the panelists have experiences of how to bring together water forestry irrigation, agriculture, fishery, water transportation to design landscape management plans. So who could take this, this question, Johan? Okay, thank you, Jatti, the governance of peak lands, particularly the water governance of peak lands is essential and a sense if you look at traditional practices also here in Indonesia, like, for example, the handle and handle as a shared central Kalimantra, an example of how already communities have dealt with sustainable management of peak lands. And I think in that perspective, it's now that the Indonesia government is moving towards kajah geys or peak hydro, the vertical systems. Yeah, yeah, that is actually, that is an important step towards more, you know, like some more landscape based management of peak lands. However, that will as well more active engagement in the by land uses, like you see, for example, in these handles, where actually land uses associate themselves and collaborate on land use and also on maintenance of water infrastructure. Like you say, now has to happen at a larger scale at kajah levels. And that's why we're actually already currently working with the Indonesian Coordinated Ministry of Economic Affairs and with the Ministry of Environmental Forestry to look at models to apply in Indonesia. And as part of that, we have facilitated a recently a study trip to the Netherlands for the Ministry of Environmental Forestry to look there at so-called water boards or water scuff, which are based around similar principles. And we're now looking at, in a sense, applying that at a larger scale. And of course, I think like a center like recourse or so because that will require substantial buildup of human capital in terms of capacity or due to this because we have to admit that the like in the current situation where peak lands are used and argument in peak lands, parts of forest, parts of forest lands, parts are out to the forest estate and so on. But then we have to, yeah, we have to use the ecological most relevant boundaries and which are defined by hydrology. So we need to build covenants systems around nations. That's currently that currently we are working on as human environment and cost cooperation with the Indonesian government and with partners really with partners like the FALU and the BC4 and like Wageningen University Research Centre and now with Tamita. Thank you. Thank you, Johan. So we also have an interesting question on financing from Jan Peters and actually he could buy at I believe Rikoft as well. They are wondering whether there are any sorts but using carbon credit schemes for financing peatland rewetting. You want to take that one? Thank you, Emily, and thank you for the questions. Well, whether it is it is possible using carbon carbon credit schemes, I will put in a carbon credit scheme under payment for environmental services as an umbrella of these mechanisms. Yes, it is possible. Yes, it is possible. And if we look at the Green Climber Fund, it is very possible for countries to access these mechanisms for carbon credit schemes. And this is for the multilateral mechanism for voluntary and bilateral mechanisms. If we look at Indonesia case with Norway or any other countries, peatland is also included as one of the activities that are eligible to get carbon credit schemes. So yes, it is very possible. Is there any question? Is there any, I miss? No, I think, I mean, if somebody wants to add something, as a way as we have other questions coming up. So like another question that we received is for Daniel and Adam. It's about, you mentioned, you know, ecological restoration by rewetting in natural succession. But we are wondering whether there are also plans to implement alternative plantations on rewetted sites in Pali-Di culture. Thank you for the question. If I understand it correctly, it was about whether polluter culture has been tested or trialled. For those who don't know what polluter culture is, it's the practice of growing or managing the land, you know, peatland in a wet condition. So that you keep the soil moisture, the peatland moisture near, close or near to the surface like in natural conditions, but you're growing crops or grasses or trees that actually are adapted to those conditions. So many native species, but you're still using them for certain purposes. So certainly polluter culture is a very attractive method for peatlands because you can actually use the peatlands, but you're keeping them in a wet condition so they don't degrade. However, it's not a practice that is well understood yet. We've got a list of polluter culture species and there have been some small scale research trials, but it hasn't been done on very big areas yet. So certainly we need to scale that up. There is technology saying it's possible, but how to do it over large areas and how to make it economically viable is also a big challenge. So definitely research needs to be done on that. FAO and others, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry Research Group here in Fordia, it's called in Indonesia, has done trials on that. They do have established demonstration plots. What we need to do is to get some funding and some finance to really scale that up, test it across large areas, and to get some of these products that are used from those polluter culture into an economic market chain so that people can make a genuine livelihood business out of it and also sustainably manage it, test it so that it's sustainable. So those things are promising, but they're not demonstrated at a large scale yet and we need to actually put those in place, particularly on the areas of the peatlands that have been moderately degraded but can be restored with this active, active revegetation, but there are already people living there. So I encourage that. Thanks for the question. Yeah, well, this polluter culture practice can be combined with the, well, in the Indonesian context, the R3 one, which is the revitalization of the local community. And I think one should be mindful that the preference is always with the local people, so you have to be careful in introducing polluter culture species. If it is not well received, we might end up with problems. So it would be nice to, after being tested scientifically, one need to explore, you know, the response from the local community, how they perceive about these species. And certainly market is very important. They usually have practiced a lot of, you know, local species like rubber in the peatland and they know the market, they know the network and they have practiced that for a long time. And this is one thing that need to be considered also. Thank you. Thank you very much. One more question from the colleague from Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative. The question is what kind of international governance or scheme is needed to promote national, global and regional efforts in restoring peatlands, in particular to balance different goals, including climate change, biodiversity and livelihoods. What kind of capacity building is needed at different levels? So it's like a big picture question, but I think quite a relevant one as well. Anybody wants to take it on? Daniel, please go ahead. Daniel first, Daniel. Suddenly the Paris Agreement is one thing and it's still quite hot in term of the political will and in the light of the nationally determined contribution, peatland certainly can be part of this exercise. As I mentioned earlier, the carbon asset is certainly very significant. The, especially in Indonesia, we know effort has been made how to include this in the NDCs. In the early submission of the FRL, peatland has been included, but peatfire is not there. So if we connect between this improvement of FRL and NDC and BUR and other discovering processes and reporting mechanism, I think Paris Agreement will be a prominent destination to get the activities, get the attention of the activities on the ground. So that's that's one thing. But if it is related to other services that peatland can provide, including biodiversity, one can also use other mechanisms within the Biodiversity Convention as well. So multiple approaches can be exercised in terms of global governance. Thank you. Johan, you wanted to add something. Yes, one option is, and we are starting to work on that now, is to look at the international trading mechanisms like, for example, the ECOA, the airline industry Corsia scheme, and to start including and to start working on making emission reductions from peatlands and actually marketable. The corollary guys, of course, better monitoring system and accurate systems. There are, of course, already VCS, voluntary carbon scheme projects active in Indonesia, like Rimbau Makmurtama, Rimbau Makmurtjai, who successfully have been trading emission reductions to international buyers. And so there is certainly scope. And there certainly is scope for more. But I think as well as, yeah, international organizations active in peatlands, I think like C4, FAO, UNIFIME, UNDP, and particularly, I think we should work, we are working in a sense of putting the building boxes in place to indeed make that happen and through international research based payment schemes. And I think particularly Indonesia, of course, is one case, but I think I would like to underline this score as well. They hear that the, of course, there are large peatlands in South America, in the Amazon basin as well in Africa, particularly in the Congo area, which, of course, are facing similar challenges. If you look at the recent Brazil forest fires, I think it underlies that certainly not only Indonesian problem. And that means as well that there is a need for globalization to go beyond the Paris agreement and look at ways that we to better link in peatlands in the international, in the international carbon offset markets, bring on the additional resources to accelerate efforts by government. Yeah, yeah. Hi, Mr. Jaffee. Yes, please. Yes. I want to add information on sustainable peat management in Indonesia. Yeah. Uh, the first, uh, under Director General, uh, Pollution Control, uh, we, we have been, um, successfully and the monitor peat monitoring and mapping the peat areas and peat dome under concession holders area. This will, uh, help us monitoring peat management and enforce private sector, uh, also responsible. And second, the monitor room for new palm oil plantation. And, uh, that one, uh, low enforcement until now, the Director General of law enforcement, 110 companies has been sent a warning, a warning by Ministry of Environment and Forestry and 19 companies are being suspended on, on their confession. 14 companies are being investigated and, uh, one on process on the court. Yeah, I hope the, the, uh, I hope the, the law enforcement make, uh, very effective, very effective for the, uh, forest fire control in Indonesia. Thank you. Thank you for this complimentary information, Mr. Jettie. We, we close to, to having to, to wrap up, but, um, I understand there is one more question from the audience at SIPA offices. Thank you for the chance to ask a question. My name is Ian, um, a researcher in here. I actually want to ask in everyone's mind in here, which actor actually have the most potential to make the effort of peatland restoration become sustainable in the long term? Like, which actor actually have the most potential to make the effort of peatland restoration become sustainable in the long term? That's my question. Yeah. Thank you very much. This is, I think that's a, that's a great question. And, and what I'll do is that I'll give everyone, each of the speaker a chance to answer and share any final thoughts before we close. So starting with you, Daniel. The question is about who is the most influential, influential actors? I don't know. Maybe everybody can play a role in different ways. We cannot single out one particular actor in handling this huge problem, extensive in terms of area, as well as, you know, unique situation in places. We cannot single out one particular actor. Depends on what is driving the deforestation, degradation, and also draining and use of fire. So if those are well identified, I think those are the, you know, actors or stakeholders that you, one needs to work with very closely. That's why I keep saying about R3, the revitalization, if, if that is the case, then how can you, you know, find out the alternative for these actors to have alternative for their, for their livelihood? If it is local community and which local community, which, which area they are, they have different kind of interests and objective. So sorry, I cannot say one particular one. And it should be well studied. Thank you for the question from my side in, I would say that they're like Daniel says, there are many actors that have many roles, but I think they have different roles. Clearly the government in many countries has a huge role to play in terms of land management decisions. I mean, governments put in place policies and legal frameworks that allow what happens in, in land or give licenses, or in the case of Indonesia. Put a moratorium and then take them away. And we've heard just then some very sort of strong action being taken by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in Indonesia on enforcement to make sure that those policies and practices are pursued by companies. So that's really clear leadership and it's pleasing to hear. So the government has a clear role, but I also, I think we've got other actors and players, it's good you put it that way. We've got companies who have leasehold lands or licenses to operate in certain areas. Different countries have different arrangements for that. They need to be given guidelines on how to manage peatlands. Many times their perspective is making profit. They don't necessarily know that what they're doing is unsustainable. A lot of this peatlands management knowledge is only relatively recent and I'm talking the last few decades. So we need to inform them, they need to follow the rules, but we also need to inform them on how to run their businesses to produce their products, hopefully change their products to something that could be more sustainable on those lands. Consumers who are buying those products need to be educated. They need to learn where their products are coming from and become more aware of the impact that might have. Certainly that's happened with a number of products and I think there's a long way to go on that. Finally, I'd say that there's a really strong role for local people, as Daniel has mentioned a couple of times. The original people who lived on a lot of these lands, the indigenous peoples, they knew how to manage these lands sustainably and many of them are still there in the margins of that. They're often in between their traditional livelihoods and the new market-based economy, getting them an opportunity to be able to go back and live a more traditional life if they want to or at least learn how to do some of those activities in a more sustainable way and make a livelihood out of it. It's a really important thing that we could have been encouraged. So there's a lot of actors with different roles, putting them all together and informing them of these things is a huge challenge but it's something we need to do. Thanks. Thank you. Let's go over to Udrak and Johan. Okay. Now I think the actors I think has already been explained by the previous speech. All actors have to play a role but particularly as coming from the international community I think our role as well and I think in the recently, the way we have facilitated for example the cooperation, South-South cooperation between countries to the Brazil Agreement. I think it's an example how we can as the international community bring the PTC to the table and then an underlying as well that PTC is a global issue. It's not only in the tropics but it's also an issue of temperate countries and it's not only in the tropical commodity supply chain but also in products like from temperate regions like for example also the European dairy products are produced on pigments which are emitting greenhouse gas emissions as we speak. So from this perspective I think we have all to play a role and I think that our international community is actually to articulate and make both member states but also the wider communities aware of the importance of this tropical pigments to avoid a global climate disaster and while at the same time share and help to share and facilitate solutions to address these issues. Well you know for me you know there are two actors in addition in addition to you know two actors have been explained by the previous speakers you know. Number one is you know the international community in terms of you know mobilizing resources you know to support you know the pit restoration and pit conservation you know implement done by you know by country who that have pitland pitland area. So it is also important you know for the international community to support you in terms of the financing because you know because the country you said it's not sufficient you know to do that. Number two is you know the journalist you know as a journalist you know it's very important you know to to write you know an article to educate in a public how important you know pitland you know for not only for you know for environment for ecosystem but also for local people. By writing a good article will also contribute you know for you know for people to protect and conserve and unlock the pitland. Thank you and finally Mr Jetty would you like to share a couple of words just very briefly before we wrap up. Yeah talking about the responsible for controlling the pit ecosystem yeah of course of a ministry of environment and forestry has a function as regulator facilitator and controlling the implementation. Of course we cannot work it alone therefore we closely collaborated with other countries ministry other ministries sorry BRG international organization private sectors and active participants from communities we also strength cooperation with other countries such as Kono, Norway, Peru, Brazil, Germany and many others. Thank you. Thank you very much and on that note I'll thank you again for joining us today. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us if you have any follow-up thoughts questions. I see that some colleagues would be interested in receiving the presentations. You can reach the organizers by contacting the contact details were indicated in the in the advert for this webinar but we can also reach us on social media at C4 and at UNREAD and because we'd really like to hear from you this is a discussion but for now this is goodbye so thank you all and have a nice day.