{"id":6112,"date":"2019-10-24T08:58:16","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T05:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6112"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:37","slug":"why-peatlands-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/10\/24\/why-peatlands-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Peatlands Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By UN Environment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tropical\npeatlands have been in the news recently with the very serious fires in\nIndonesia\u2019s Jambi Province. Dianna Kopansky has worked extensively on tropical\nas well as other peatlands. She also coordinates the UN Environment Programme\u2019s\n(UNEP) work on peatlands. In this interview, she tells us about the importance\nof peatlands and what can be done to protect them from fires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why\nare those peatland fires happening?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s\nnot the first time Indonesia is facing huge fires. In 2015, they had\nmega-fires, and many of them on peatlands. Because peatlands are composed of\nthick layers of partly decomposed organic material that formed over thousands\nof years, they store lots of carbon. Fires are a regular problem for Indonesia\nduring the summer months and this year again, they made the headlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Peatland\nhealth is under threat from drainage for agriculture, commercial forestry, peat\nextraction, infrastructure development and, of course, the effects of global\nheating. There are three main reasons why forest and peatland fires occur:\nvarious actors (companies, small scale farmers) use fire to clear land for\ndevelopment and agriculture; fires are often used to stake claims to land in\ndisputes between big companies and small farmers; and drained peatlands are\nhighly flammable during the dry season, so small-scale clearing and camp fires\ncan easily burn out of control. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unenvironment.org\/news-and-stories\/story\/why-peatlands-matter\">Read\nmore&gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By UN Environment Tropical peatlands have been in the news recently with the very serious fires in Indonesia\u2019s Jambi Province. Dianna Kopansky has worked extensively on tropical as well as&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}