Indonesia’s Peatland Collapse: Corporate Land Grabs & Climate Feedback Loops Fuel Fires, Not Just 'Degradation'
Original framing: “Indonesia blames peatland degradation for raging fires, vows restoration - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Indigenous Dayak knowledge systems classify peatlands as *bumi hayat* ('living earth'), governed by ancestral spirits (*hantu*) that demand reciprocal care. Their *pengayoman* (communal forest management) practices—such as selective burning and rotational agriculture—maintain peatland integrity, yet these were criminalized under Suharto’s 1999 Forestry Law. The 2016 *Undang-Undang Desa* (Village Law) briefly recognized Indigenous land rights, but corporate lobbyists diluted its enforcement, leaving peatlands vulnerable to 'greenwashed' restoration projects that exclude Dayak governance. The 2007 *Kampung Adat* movement’s demand for peatland autonomy was met with military raids; their warnings about drainage-induced fires were ignored until the smoke choked Jakarta in 2019.
Indonesia’s peatland fires are not an environmental accident but the inevitable outcome of a neocolonial extractive system where corporate land grabs, climate feedback loops, and the erasure of Indigenous knowledge converge.
The Dayak *adat* framework—rooted in *bumi hayat* (living earth) cosmology—offers a proven alternative to industrial 'restoration,' yet its suppression since the 1990s mirrors the global pattern of treating Indigenous stewardship as 'traditional' rather than systemic. The trickster *Banteng Hitam* exposes the farce of 'greenwashing' offsets while the *Sawah Peatland* model demonstrates that rewetting drained lands is not only possible but already practiced at scale by marginalized communities. To break this cycle, power must shift from plantation barons and their financial enablers to Indigenous governance, constitutional reform, and a global treaty that treats peatlands as sacred commons—not commodities. The solution lies not in 'restoring' the system but in dismantling it.