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

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.


Introduction
The government as a regulator in 2014 appeared Government Regulation Nr 71/2014 on the protection and management of peatland ecosystems, but farmers do not pay serious attention to the regulation (Armanto et al., 2017b).Land clearing by farmers living on surrounding peatlands is often done without good planning, which leads to inequality in land use, for example land clearing by burning and illegal logging (Armanto & Wildayana, 2016;Ningsih et al., 2017).
As a result, peatlands are degraded due to peat subsidence, causing the area around the peatland dome is subjected to floods.This is then exacerbated by the shrinking of economic resources that can be utilized by communities in the peatlands (Adriani & Wildayana, 2015).This degradation will make productivity of farmers decline because of the difficulty of obtaining economic resources.This inevitably makes farmers vulnerable to poverty (Adriani et al., 2018;Zahri et al., 2018).Poverty vulnerability causes farmers to stay pushed back to clear land without good planning (Wildayana et al., 2017;Lu, 2017).This cycle is used by the community in the use of peatlands.Peat utilization often ignores land security rules where logging and land clearing are done by burning.This causes the fire easily to spread to other areas and make forest fires become massive (Wildayana, 2017;Udoh et al., 2017).
Peat degradation will significantly affect the global climate and contribute to the biodiversity loss, reduced supply of fresh water, floods, drought, and land and water pollution (Sarno et al., 2017).These impact components will all directly affect economic activity, directly influence livelihood sources, daily life farmers strongly depending to peatlands (Pangerungan et al., 2017;Wildayana, 2018;Wildayana & Armanto, 2018).

Livelihood Patterns of Households on Peatlands
Patterns of livelihoods have changed over time with respect to the use of peatlands.The basic typology of livelihoods is changing from hunting and gathering; to sonor system (slash and burn agriculture); and to permanent agriculture.Table 1 determines the following in relation to peatlands: livelihoods, types of peat utilization, peat density, how to use peatland resources (value versus exchange rate), and household dependence on peatland resources.
Three types of livelihoods patterns are performed on peatlands, i.e. hunting and gathering; sonor system; and permanent agriculture, which have different values and objectives on each attributes of the activities.These patterns of livelihoods are consistent with the findings of Imanudin et al (2018) and Armanto et al (2016).The attributes consist of 10 points which are the benefits, results, impacts and also the risks occurring in the peatlands.The hunting and gathering pattern belongs to the first community pattern, and is a very old agricultural activity, where farmers only use peatlands as hunting places to get food sources.The pattern of sonor systems is often done for mobile farming, where after harvesting time they will leave or abandoned, then they do sonor system on the other land.It is in line with Armanto et al (2017a) found that peatland degradation is mostly influenced by human intervention.
The permanent pattern of agriculture is the activity carried out on peatlands running for a long time where peatlands are usually used as HTI (Industrial Plantation Forest) or oil palm plantation.HTI and oil palm plantation is done in the long term because the oil palm itself takes five years to produce TBS (Fresh Fruit Bunches) and oil palm plant cycles can reach 25-30 years.
The biodiversity density is certainly strongly influenced by the activities or processing performed on peatlands.In the hunting and gathering, the density of biodiversity is high because peatlands lack of human intervention and farmers hunt for fauna and flora only.Then for the pattern of sonor system gives more impact of biodiversity density, which is worse than permanent agriculture pattern.This is because to perform the activities of the sonor system, farmers do land clearing by burning, thus damaging biodiversity density.Sarno et al (2017) also states that the existence and degradation of peatlands is associated with local agricultural activities.
The various resources that can be obtained in peatlands have a use value and exchange value in which both values are influenced by the product resulting from the livelihoods pattern performed in peatlands.For the highest use value is the product resulting from the pattern of livelihoods hunting and gathering.This is because the community can directly use it without having to do the exchange process.But for exchange value, hunting and gathering has the lowest value because the resources that can be obtained directly in peatlands are resources that usually have no high selling value such as purun plant (raw materials for making mats).Armanto et al (2013) and Widayana & Armanto (2018) concluded that it is in line with conditions in the research area.
The highest exchange value is the product produced by the permanent agriculture livelihoods pattern, where peatlands are processed into palm oil and wood products for pulp and papers.Both of these products (palm oil and woods) have a high selling value because it is the raw material of various industries.However, the use value of permanent agriculture pattern is low because palm oil product cannot be taken directly used because it requires processing and a minimum of five years to produce.Contribution to welfare, permanent pattern of agriculture gives high contribution because of marketing of product status which resulted in increased income.
Risks that can occur in peatlands caused by livelihoods pattern activities, such as forest and land fires, floods and drought.The pattern of hunting and gathering has only a small chance of causing the risks to occur.While the pattern of sonor system and permanent agriculture has a high probability that risks occur.Sonor system pattern is very possible threat of land fires occur, this is because the sonor system does burning for land clearing, then after the harvest used land left alone.Lands were left and sensitively vulnerable to land fires.The permanent pattern of agriculture also improves the possibility of flood and drought threats.Peatlands that have been converted into plantation areas have changed the water absorption system because peatlands are no longer able to absorb water, so there may be flood and drought threats.Junedi et al (2017) stated that the change of nature of peatland caused conversion of peatland to agricultural activity in the broad sense.
The highest sustainability of peatlands is on hunting and gathering patterns.This is because in this pattern peatlands are not intensively disturbed, so the peatlands still have the original ability to recover themselves.However, the sonor system causes peatlands to no longer be used or even destroyed due to various activities carried out such as forest burning, resulting in peatlands losing their original functions.

Characterizing Social-Political Farmers Living in Peatlands
Most households as the research subject are farmers moving and/or farmers living in peatlands (i.e.hunting and gathering categories, and sonor systems).However, there are other livelihoods patterns found that are relevant and not described in this typology.Among them are unattached farming and grazing (small forest), small farmers focusing on tree planting or agro forestry for timber and firewood, or timber mill workers, small-scale loggers, timber collectors and others.Some of them live far from the peatlands, but to some extent they still depend on peatlands resources.
The farmers who live in the peatlands area fall into four broad categories (Table 2 and Figure 2).In general, the poor groups found in the peatlands area can be grouped into indigenous farmers, old settler migrants, new comers (transmigrants), and spontaneous comers.The division of this group is only to facilitate the understanding of the condition of rural society, however there is not clear delineation between each group.The political weaknesses of peatlands dependent communities are stimulated by the long distance and bad infrastructure to the city center, where political investors that favor peatlands conversion tend to be established.Yosada et al (2017) found a similar phenomenon that local people living in areas far from urban areas have difficulty communicating and playing a political role in government.Not all contact with 'outsiders' puts peatlands in unfavorable positions.Some peatlands inhabitants work together with investor to form jointly alliances to utilize peatlands.There are also some destructive competition, which are not from attacks of outsiders, but it come from internal rural society.There are several logical relationships between the geography of poverty and peatlands summarized in Table 3 and Figure 3.This relationship is divided into groups of poverty comprising chronic poor, very poor, fairly poor and the temporary poor.

Poverty Description
Chronic poor Very strong dependence on peatlands, long before modern social change took place.
It is primordial and should not be the result of contact with the modern economy Very poor Peatlands serve as a refuge or escape for the helpless and impoverished rural farmers who fled from conflict in the community Poor Occupy peatlands in ''islands'', where comparative stability is untouched by modern socioeconomic systems.
Living in a remote area, reaching to markets and technology is slowed down (hampered); far distance from major roads, city center, ports, and projects of infrastructure.
Has a low 'rent' rate due to ecological conditions, limited market access and services

Fairly poor
The existence of open-access or low barriers causes various projects that go to peatlands in favor of the poor.The existence of these projects makes it a means to survive and become an agent of development for rural limited-access farmers.

Temporary Poor
The temporary poor belongs to farmers, who are still vulnerable to changes in economic cycles from normal to economic crisis.Seasonal changes are found in cases of fisherman poverty and food crop agriculture, natural disasters or the impacts of certain policies that result in decreased incomes that lead to poverty.The temporary poor is categorized as having a relatively better life than the chronic poor and the poor.Their income is equal to or more than the rice exchange rate of 960 kg/capita/year.Temporary poor communities, for example, are spontaneous comers, and new comers (transmigrants) that fail to enter and are unable to colonize villages adjacent to peatlands.The transmigrants or newcomers initially had the opportunity to gain access to the economy, but ultimately they failed and the inability to take over the peatlands in conducting farming activities to improve its stewardship.Therefore, the transmigrants are a group that is very vulnerable to natural poverty.

Concepts of Peatland Restoration and other Lessons-Learnt
The challenge to reconcile livelihoods and peatlands restoration is underdeveloped and mostly unfulfilled.Barati et al (2017) and Fobissie et al (2017) argued that it is necessary to humanity approach in the opinion unification between achieving reconciliation between the needs of livelihoods and sustainability application of natural resources.In the last few decades, the average rural incomes have increased, but natural peatlands have disappeared at high or severe degrees.The various solutions that have been tested have gone a long way from their original goals, although some positive impacts were identified in rural areas of peatlands; but there are many failures.Dzidza et al (2017) summarized the need for location-specific strategies for poverty alleviation and systematically implemented at the village level.Therefore, new creative approaches adaptive to the conditions of specific peatlands, such as payments for peatland services area guaranteed, however this approach is largely untested.For tropical peatlands not all of the above arguments can be applied.This is due to several factors, among others: 1) Peatlands in industrial countries are much different from tropical peatlands; therefore the method of restoration of industrialized countries is clearly different from tropical peatlands.Following and copying the ways in which advanced country restoration is an action that is not recommended and is naive.
2) To reach the peatlands turning point through the industrial state restoration program will have more impact on peatlands damage that will occur before the turning point is reached.
3) Peatlands restoration of industrialized countries is mostly on the basis of high fuel consumption, however in the research areas is because of extensification and intensification of agriculture and plantation.
4) Even though peatlands are closed then increased, it will not be the same peatlands.Much natural diversity will be automatically disappeared during the process.
Thus it has to be done some efforts to reconcile poverty alleviation and peatlands restoration intentionally and systematically at the site level.This should also be based on endogenous dynamics, regarding to exogenous international issues, regional, and national factors.Similar finding was also expressed by Limba et al (2017).These exogenous factors can be done through research and policy makers by government.The convergence of poverty alleviation and peatlands restoration is largely an unintentional artifact of high state dependence on oil revenues and low population.

Compatibility between Peatlands with Poverty Alleviation
Many action plans aim to produce 'win-win' results, where livelihoods improvements are tailored to the benefits of environmental protection.However, this action plan seldom determines 'win-win' results, nor does one win.
We propose simple and fourfold typology to understand the results (Figure 4).Besides that, it needs technological innovation and business diversification to achieve sustainability of natural resources (Adriani et al., 2017;2018;Zahri et al., 2018;Armanto et al., 2017b).Various activities carried out on peatlands can be done on condition that they have to pay attention to the original function of the peatlands themselves.So the benefits of these peatlands can be continued.Peatlands also need to be conserved to preserve the natural ecosystem.for their own business interests.This restoration activity needs a program of government with the aim to restore peatlands to return as before.

Conclusions
There are three points in relation to strategic poverty alleviation planning, firstly the chronic poor sites tend to overlap with peatlands, secondly it is more important to cultivate peatlands to prevent farmers from falling into deeper poverty than to alleviate farmers out of poverty, and thirdly an intrinsic quality of peatlands and the context of their use tends to conflict with poverty alleviation goals, but there is a new tendency that allows offsetting these undesirable qualities.The best solution is to apply 'win-lose' or 'lose-win' approaches to peatlands because peatlands degradation can be minimized, although we cannot avoid peatland degradation at the zero level, but at least it can be inhibited.Thus, it is needed to cooperate between investors with farmers in controlling peatlands, so peatlands are not destroyed altogether.
, HTI or demands of work or businessman Note: Field survey results (2017).
Figure 2. Percentage of farmers group in peatlands

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Quadrant classification models of farmers welfare and peatland Two areas of peatlands can be utilized, namely forest and non-forest areas.Local communities are only allowed jsd.ccsenet.