While the government is drafting a game-changing map on peatland restoration, companies are required to come clean with data and information on their concessions. The map will serve as a control mechanism against companies carrying out illicit activities, such as forest burning.

The Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG), tasked with restoring more than 2.6 million hectares of damaged peatland, is boosting the resolution of the national peatland map from the current scale of 1:250,000 to 1:50,000.

“We are going to produce a detailed map up to 50,000 scale or even 2,500 scale. That map will show the real condition and the depth of peatland,” BRG head Nazir Foead said.

The high-resolution map, he added, would be available by end of this year, covering 860,000 hectares of the agency’s priority restoration area.

The government has never had a high-resolution map before, making it difficult for it to manage its vast forests. This low-resolution map has also led to many problems, such as concessions eating up indigenous land and difficulties to enforce law on companies carrying out slash-and-burn practices as the boundaries between concessions are not clear.

But the high-resolution map aims to solve those problems, with the government planning to use it to determine the category of individual peatland areas, separating them into either protected or cultivated areas.

“The restoration and methodology will be based on this detailed map and it will show how ruined and devastated it is, or how good it is,” Nazir said.

With such a detailed map, there is no use for concession owners to hide anymore, according to him.

“The land owners in that area should know that they will be scrutinized because that map will be available. Therefore, please be cooperative and come clean,” said Nazir.

The BRG also plans to install a monitoring scheme that would monitor peat condition in real time, he added.

Among the technologies to be used is Sensory Data Transmission Service Assisted by Midori Engineering (SESAME), a tool that can measure water levels in real time. Through the technology, developed by the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) and Hokkaido University, the movement of groundwater can be controlled and thus decrease land and forest fires.

The technology can also measure the impact of canals in draining water from peatland, which had made it nearly impossible to extinguish fires once they started in dry peatland during the dry season.

Previously, the BRG requested that all companies with concessions that fall into their priority zone submit their concession maps to the agency, as 87 percent of the restoration areas, or 2.3 million hectares, are in concession areas.

Since the majority of the restoration areas are in concession areas, the BRG has to work closely with companies as they must carry out the restoration works at their own expense.

However, the country’s largest pulp and paper producer, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), part of local conglomerate Sinar Mas Group, repeatedly rejected the agency’s request for the company to submit its concession map.

It was not until the BRG spoke to the media regarding APP’s lack of cooperation did the company submit its documents to the agency on June 13.

Therefore, Nazir said, companies should come clean rather than wait for the detailed map to reveal their dirty laundry.