Stop­ping Fires with canal block­ing

• The Jakarta Post, Indonesia
 
• 8 Sep 2014
 
• 6

I re­fer to an ar­ti­cle ti­tled “Canal block­ing: One so­lu­tion to stop peat fires, ( The Jakarta Post, Sept. 1) by Warief Dja­janto Ba­sorie.

We did this canal block­ing ex­per­i­ment to re-wet de­graded peat­lands in a ex-mega rice project in Cen­tral Kal­i­man­tan in 20042007. It was con­sid­ered the first ever canal block­ing ex­per­i­ment in the trop­i­cal peat­lands.

We con­structed a num­ber of wooden-based struc­ture dams filled with min­eral soil bags be­tween the cham­bers of the dams. This had two ma­jor func­tions.

First, min­eral soil bags would strengthen dam tim­ber struc­ture to min­i­mize dam­age to dam struc­ture in re­sponse to strong wa­ter pres­sure and a high wa­ter debit. Se­cond, the min­eral soil bags were plant­ing me­dia for aquatic plants to cre­ate a nat­u­ral dam mea­sure once the wooden struc­tures eroded or de­com­posed with age.

Our canal block­ing in the ex-mega rice project was not a sim­plejob, but it used sim­ple tech­nol­ogy.We adopted lo­cal Dayak dam tech­nol­ogy called “tabat” and we con­structed a few big dams man­u­allywith lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties to block

the main canals (32 me­ters inwidth) and pri­mary canals (10-15m in width).

We planted se­lected aquatic plants such pe­rupuk, Shorea Be­lan­gi­ran and pan­danus on top of the min­eral soil bags, af­ter the dam struc­ture and soil bags sta­bi­lized (8-12 months af­ter the dam was com­pleted).

Apart from plant­ing aquatic plants on top of the con­structed dams, we also planted 10,000s of in­dige­nous peat swamp trees along the blocked canals. They are grow­ing very well up to the present.

Our con­structed dams are func­tion­ing well, main­tain­ing sur­face and ground wa­ter ta­bles along the blocked canals and also pre­vent­ing fires with the blocked ar­eas.

In Jan­uary this year, I vis­ited our canal block­ing site and wasproud to see that our dams were still func­tion­ing and had already become nat­u­ral dams, as the aquatic plants we planted had grown well and were now act­ingas nat­u­ral dams. Some trees planted along the canal bankshave di­am­e­ters of be­tween 20-30cen­time­ters and oth­ers are taller

Our canal block­ing ac­tiv­i­ties have been very suc­cess­ful and I have tried for many years to con­vince re­lated stake­hold­ers (gov­ern­ments, donors, and so on) to adopt and repli­cate our canal block­ing ex­per­i­ment to ad­dress peat prob­lems in In­done­sia. How­ever, I al­ways re­ceive a lack of se­ri­ous re­sponses from these par­ties and my dis­ap­point­ment with this con­tin­ues.

Alue Do­hong Palangka Raya

than seven me­ters.

Our canal block­ing ac­tiv­i­ties have been very suc­cess­ful and I have tried for many years to con­vince re­lated stake­hold­ers (gov­ern­ments, donors, and so on) to adopt and repli­cate our canal block­ing ex­per­i­ment to ad­dress peat prob­lems in In­done­sia. How­ever, I al­ways re­ceive a lack of se­ri­ous re­sponses from these par­ties and my dis­ap­point­ment with this con­tin­ues.

Alue Do­hong Palangka Raya