Peat is organic material, consisting largely of residues of the incomplete decomposition of plants under conditions ofwaterlogging. Peatlands are distributed in all climatic zones from boreal, temperate and humid tropical zones, in both the northern and and southern hemisphere where ever suitable climatic and edaphic conditions preveils. Peat swamp forests occur on a great variety of sites and substrates. They may occupy small and scattered areas, or very extensive, continuous tracts of land. Over 12 percent of the global peatland occurs in humid tropical zones, and nearly 10 percent of these are found in the Southeast Asian Region covering about 32.94 million hectares (Immirzi and Maltby, 1992). Unlike that of temperate and boreal region, where peat is mainly derived from remains of low growing plants such as Sphagnum and Gramineae, tropical peat is formed from forest trees. Consequently its physical and chemical properties and the vegetation its supports are different from the temperate counterpart. As such Tropical Peatlands ecosystem is unique because it is both rainforest and peatlands. Not only does theirexistencedepend upon precise environmental condition, but they also influence the environment itself. Apart from performing many of the usual natural function of wetlands, they have special important attributes of carbon fixing, sequestering and storing which is a vital to the world’s climate system. They are also performing important role in maintaining global biodiversity and serve as irreplaceable palaeo-environmental archives. The importance of peatlands in providing essential natural, ecological and economic resource functions have been recognized with the adoption of Resolution VIII.17 of Ramsar, in the 8 th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Convention of Wetlands, Valencia, 2002.

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