Badan Gaprak: People-Led Peatland Management

Gaprak is a term used in informal village football tournaments for a sliding tackle against an opponent. As I understand it, gaprak involves kicking, bringing down or targeting an opponent’s body — whether their legs, shins or ankles.

Its original purpose is simple: to win the ball and stop an opponent’s attack. But in football, “menggaprak” has come to suggest rough and brutal play.

I do not want to get lost in the football definition of gaprak. In this article, I use Gaprak as an acronym for Gambut Pengelolaan Rakyat — peatlands managed by the people. It expresses the idea that communities living in and directly dependent on peatland ecosystems should have a greater role in managing them.

The Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG) was established on 6 January 2016 under Presidential Regulation No. 1/2016. Its creation was the administration of President Joko Widodo’s response to forest and land fires, including fires in peatland ecosystems in 2015. At the time, about 2.6 million hectares of land burned — an area equivalent to millions of football pitches.

In my recollection, BRG’s establishment was also linked to the support and commitment of donor countries concerned about environmental issues and climate change in Indonesia, including Norway, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. This international support was subsequently used for various peatland management and restoration programmes.

BRG was a non-structural agency reporting directly to the President. Its mandate later expanded beyond peatlands to include mangrove ecosystems.

In 2020, Presidential Regulation No. 120/2020 changed its name to the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency (BRGM). The word “restoration” became closely associated with the institution’s identity.

In 2025, BRGM was dissolved as part of a government restructuring. Its peatland and mangrove functions and authority were then distributed among several ministries and agencies according to their respective duties and mandates.

Now that forest and land fires are once again attracting attention, proposals have emerged to establish a national body specifically responsible for managing peatlands and mangroves. These proposals include preventing fires, monitoring land, early detection, empowering local economies and strengthening institutions so that peatland management does not remain a short-term programme.

Returning to the idea of Badan Gaprak: I believe peatlands should be managed with stronger involvement from the public. Instead of using the name BPGMN, why not call it Badan Manggaprak?

The name is a play on words. But behind the wordplay is a serious idea: people living around peatlands should be recognised as an essential part of peatland ecosystem governance.

They are the people closest to the peatlands and among those who feel the effects of forest and land fires first. Peatland management therefore cannot be left solely to the government, landowners or corporations. Local communities must take part in decision-making and monitoring, and share in the benefits of management.

Names matter because an institution’s name also reflects its outlook. Restoration is important, but peatland management is not simply about returning ecosystems to their previous condition. Economic, social and cultural issues, as well as the sustainability of people’s livelihoods, must be addressed together.

As one expert has observed, peatlands are a complicated and complex ecosystem to understand. But for people born and raised in peatland communities, the ecosystem is not entirely unfamiliar.

They understand how peatlands behave through daily experience and knowledge passed down through generations. Recognising the seasons, managing land, making use of natural resources and knowing when peat is too wet or too dry are all part of local knowledge.

Indonesia currently has around 13.4 million hectares of peatland. Because peat can readily catch fire when it dries out, fires in these areas are particularly difficult to tackle.

The issue, then, cannot be reduced to blaming communities for failing to understand peatlands. Economic pressures also shape how land is used. Some people using peatland are transmigrants or newcomers who have settled there for two or three generations.

Meanwhile, communities that have lived around peatlands for generations often possess local knowledge of the ecosystem’s characteristics. They sustain themselves through activities such as gathering forest products, hunting, fishing, farming and using other natural resources. For them, peatlands are not merely land to exploit, but part of a living environment governed by natural cycles.

Climate change, however, means that knowledge of rainfall patterns, dry seasons and hydrological conditions can no longer always serve as the sole guide. Local knowledge therefore needs to be brought together with modern science.

This is where Badan Manggaprak must develop the right strategy and organisational structure and working procedures (SOTK). In my view, a non-structural agency responsible for peatlands should avoid becoming too entrenched in bureaucratic institutional models. Badan Manggaprak could be designed around a presidium rather than relying solely on a conventional deputy-based structure.

Leadership positions could also reflect areas of expertise and scientific disciplines relevant to peatlands. At least four broad fields could serve as pillars: geodesy and mapping; civil engineering and hydrology; social, economic and cultural studies; and peat soil science.

Each of these fields could then build working networks in the different peatland regions. There is no single formula that can be applied to every peatland ecosystem in Indonesia.

Different fields, different grasshoppers; different waters, different fish. The same is true of peatlands: there is no panacea that will automatically work in every peat hydrological unit (KHG). Work on peatland management and disaster mitigation could involve regional universities without requiring all experts to be brought to Jakarta. Academics could serve as partners in mitigation and management in their own regions, particularly because they understand the characteristics of local KHGs.

Understanding the characteristics of each KHG would make peatland management policies more context-specific. Peatlands could be kept sustainable while also generating economic value for local communities.

One challenge is the practice of burning land. Burning is often chosen because it is relatively cheap and quick compared with other land-clearing methods. In some circumstances, clearing land by burning costs far less than doing it manually or using heavy machinery.

This is why policy cannot simply prohibit the practice. If people need land to earn a living, economically viable alternatives must be available. Otherwise, a ban will collide with the necessities of daily life.

Badan Manggaprak’s role, therefore, should not be limited to putting out fires when they occur. Its more important task is to find ways to ensure that people have no economic reason to burn land.

Water-table management, peat rewetting, restoration of degraded land, improved land productivity, the development of commodities suited to peatland conditions and the creation of alternative sources of income must form part of an integrated policy.

The effects of forest and land fires do not stop at the loss of vegetation cover. Fires and environmental changes can have consequences for public health, air quality, water availability, and people’s social and economic lives.

The approach must therefore be interdisciplinary. Perhaps it is time to stop seeing peatlands only as land to be restored after it has been damaged. Peatlands are ecosystems that must be managed, protected and used sustainably alongside the communities living in and around them.

So why not Badan Gaprak? Or, to make the idea more explicit: Badan Manggaprak. Long live Badan Gaprak.