Alleviating peatland fire risk using water management trinity and community involvement

Abstract

Abstract Conventionally, agriculture in peatland requires soil drainage to enable the crops to grow. This often results in being over-drained and makes it vulnerable to fires. The risk can be contained by applying water management trinity (WMT), which creates canals for water regulation and reservoirs instead of drainage. This study aimed to examine, elaborate, and validate the WMT effect and community involvement in minimizing fire risk in peatland. We collected water table depth every two weeks from 1 April 2017 to 31 December 2020 in a coconut plantation under WMT and employed Focus Groups Discussions (FGD) in five villages in Pulau Burung District, Indragiri Hilir Regency, Riau. The result showed that the existence of WMT for more than three decades has successfully maintained water table depth between 30 and 70 cm that is influenced by seasons. The fire occurrence based on the FGD interview has been validated with hotspot data from NASA’s FIRMS. This research also employed SWOT analysis to examine the local fire mitigation strategy. The progress in lowering fire incidents and risk should be intervened with finding long-term solutions to increase farmers’ capability on sustainable agriculture. Our finding reveals that the main strength in lowering fire risk is people’s awareness in every village on the negative impact of land burning, along with the existence of WMT.