Southeast Asia’s peatlands contain around 11-14% of the world’s peat carbon, with the majority located in Indonesia (65%) followed by Malaysia (10%). Since the 1990s, however, the conversion of peatlands into agricultural plantations (mainly for palm oil and pulpwood production) has been the leading cause of soil-based carbon emissions in Southeast Asia. The accelerated rate of peat and non-peat land conversion across the region poses a serious dilemma for soil-based nature-based carbon sinks governance because commodities are more highly valued than ecosystem services at all levels of governance.
Although carbon sequestration in temperate agricultural soils has been extensively studied for two decades in Europe, no such level of understanding exists in the tropics, including Southeast Asia. Scholarship on the governance of soil-based carbon in Southeast Asia remains limited to peat soils but has not expanded to encompass non-peat (mineral) agricultural soils.
Our research will examine soil organic carbon governance in peatlands and agricultural soils by identifying factors in agricultural land conversion and exploring (dis)incentives to improve the governance of soil organic carbon in selected sites.
Publications:
Varkkey H & Lupascu M (2024) Peat fires in Brunei Darussalam: Considerations for ASEAN haze cooperation and emerging regional infrastructure development. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 45(1): 129-141.
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Photo by Rights and Resources Initiative
Carbon Governance in Southeast Asia (CGSEA) 