Exploring Ketapang's Peatlands: UI Students Join Local Residents to Prevent Forest Fires
In peatlands, fire is not always visible from the surface. When a fire occurs, embers can spread and burn the soil layers from beneath, creeping slowly until they become difficult to detect and extinguish.
This characteristic makes forest and land fires (karhutla) a complex environmental issue in Ketarmang Regency, West Kalimantan. This challenge has prompted several students from the University of Indonesia (UI) to engage directly with the local community.
For 28 days, from 21 July to 18 August 2026, they were present in Pematang Gadung and Sungai Besar villages as part of the Community Service Programme (K2N). The UI K2N team, comprising students from various study programmes, was guided by Field Supervisor Dr Raisye Soleh Haghia.
Raisye, a lecturer in the History Study Programme at the Faculty of Humanities (FIB) UI, explained that for the students, this programme is more than just fulfilling a community service obligation. In Ketapang, they faced firsthand the environmental issues often discussed in classrooms: how communities live alongside peatland ecosystems while facing the threat of forest fires.
He noted that the programme was initiated by the Directorate of Community Service and Social Innovation (DPIS) UI in collaboration with the Indonesian Nature Rehabilitation Initiative Foundation (YIARI), a non-profit organisation focused on the rescue, rehabilitation, and protection of protected wildlife, as well as the restoration of peatland forest ecosystems in Ketapang.
During its implementation, he added, the students did not work alone. They collaborated with ‘The Power of Mama’ (TPOM), a community of women supported by YIARI, consisting of local mothers involved in women’s empowerment and environmental conservation.
“This collaboration brings together the academic knowledge of students with the experience of a community that has long dealt directly with their environment,” Raisye stated in a media release in Jakarta on Thursday (3/9/2026).
He mentioned that the women involved in TPOM have long been an essential part of monitoring land conditions. The students arrived to provide assistance, strengthen capacity, and help provide data and educational materials that can be utilised sustainably.