Formulating Popular Policies for Peat Restoration Based on Livelihoods of Local Farmers

Abstract

Important peatland issues developed were how to restore peatlands and followed by increasing rural livelihoods. This research aimed to analyze how peatlands can be utilized to alleviate poverty? and how to integrate peatland restoration with poverty alleviation. This research has been conducted in peatlands of OKI district, South Sumatra Indonesia in 2017. Data about bio geophysical aspects of peatlands, social, economic and political institutions of farmers were surveyed in the fields, performed in qualitative and quantitative approach, and analyzed in forms of tables and descriptions. Important themes have been discussed in formulating popular policies for peat restoration based on livelihoods of local farmers, among others poor groups; characteristics of farmers from the socio-political aspect; concept of peatland restoration and other lessons-learnt; compatibility of peat-based poverty alleviation; and need to improve policy making. The chronic poor sites tend to overlap with peatland degradation; it is more important to cultivate peatlands to prevent farmers from falling into deeper poverty than to reduce farmers out of poverty, and the intrinsic quality of peatlands and their contents tends to conflict with poverty alleviation goals, but there are some possible trends to minimize peatlands degradation and to alleviate poverty simultaneously. The best approach is to apply the 'win-lose' or 'lose-win' approach, even though we are not able to avoid peatland degradation at a zero level, but at least it can be inhibited. Cooperation between investors and farmers in managing peatlands is needed, so that the peatland resources are not completely degraded.

Finding Policies of Disguised Unemployment Arrangement: Through Various Technological Innovation of Agriculture and Income Diversification for Tidal Rice Farmer

“…When farmer households which applying technological innovation focus on rice farming, the rate of disguised unemployment will increase followed by a rise in farming productivity as shown by the results of this study. This result is in line with the finding of the research conducted by [16]; [23]; [7] that the results obtained give several recommendations on the formulation of policy concerning agriculture.…”

“…According to [7], household income diversification strategy starts off with the process of constructing a variety of businesses and carrying out social cooperation in attempt to survive and improve their standard of living. Based on this research result, income generating sources in accordance with encompass as follows: 1) primary produces of farming, livestocks, forestry, fisheries or fish caught including farming labor wages, crops selling and farming produce consumption; 2) Non-farming activities in terms of off-farm income-generating activities such as mining, processed products, public services, development, trading, transportation, government employees; 3) wages earned from working for employers; 4) self-employment earnings; 5) off-farm income generating activities outside the domicile; 6) Non-farming income outside domicile.…”

“…However, the application of technological innovation gives rise to issues concerning employment as it decreases the need for labor and creates disguised unemployment in rural areas [2], [3], [23]. The use of technological innovation engenders longer span of unemployment, which contributes to the lower income farmers derive from the agricultural sector [7], [17]. This issue is even more compounded by the majority of agricultural reinvestment made to develop industries with capital-intensive technology [18].…”

Socio Economic Factors Causing Rapid Peatlands Degradation in South Sumatra

“…Therefore, careful planning is required when converting peatlands. Planning should refer to the results of in-depth study of local peatland characteristics and their impact if peatlands will be converted [17], [18], [19].…”

Dynamics, Degradation and Future Challenges of Wetlands in South Sumatra Province, Indonesia

“…Wetlands have been mostlyused for oil palm, rubber, fishery, livestock, food agriculture, industry, residential, recreation, shopping centers and others. Changes in the uses of wetlands are mostly due to human intervention [4], policies and concepts of wetlandsutilization planning, which are oftenundertaken for economicbenefitsonly [5][6][7]. Wetlandsenvironment aspects as a supporting media for human life are stillgettingless attention.…”