Indonesia’s new peatland agency faces questions over what it will do differently

Filed 1h ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk

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Trio for Piano, Cello, and Clarinet

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Indonesia has stood up a new National Peatland and Mangrove Management Agency after letting its predecessor, the BRGM, lapse in December 2024, following yet another catastrophic fire season.

Environmental groups including Walhi, Pantau Gambut and Greenpeace Indonesia note that the new agency's legal basis, authority, structure and accountability remain undisclosed, and that peatland oversight was scattered across ministries in the interim, complicating coordination.

Experts who met with President Prabowo Subianto urged broader powers than the old agency had, while officials emphasized fire prevention given how much water it takes to extinguish a peat fire once it starts.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

You don't fix a leaky roof by renaming the roofer. Indonesia shut down one peat agency, watched the fires get worse without it, and now has stood up a near-identical one with no paperwork to show what's different this time. If prevention really is cheaper than firefighting, somebody ought to write that down before the next haze season, not after.

Source: Read the original at Mongabay → Scored: Trio for Piano, Cello, and Clarinet · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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