Hello! Halo! Kumusta! Xin chào! สวัสดี! မင်္ဂလာပါ! ជំរាបសួរ! ສະບາຍດີ!

🎢 Disneyland, Legoland, Tomorrowland*

*OK this one doesn’t belong here

🎡 Amusement parks tend to have the word “land” in their name because… well they take up quite a bit of it. For instance, the biggest Disneyland (Shanghai) occupies 116 hectares whereas the biggest Legoland (Windsor) occupies 61 hectares. These two pale in comparison to Walt Disney World Resort though, which takes up a whopping 11,000 hectares!

⚽ If we add up all human infrastructure, it amounts to 10 billion hectares. For football (soccer) fans out there, this is about 14 billion standard football fields. Sounds like a lot right?

😲 Well what if I told you that this human infrastructure takes up a mere <1% of the world’s land. In fact, 38 times more land is used for raising livestock alone! That’s a whole lot more space for cows than people. This is another dimension as to why the climate has beef with the cattle industry.

🤠 In this issue, we are going to explore why land use is such a critical piece to solving climate change.

🤔 What’s the deal with Land Use?

📊 In our decarbonizing agriculture issue, we showed the following chart regarding GHG emissions in Southeast Asia that depicts “land-use change & forestry” as a major source of emissions.

🧑🏻‍🌾 Land use and agriculture are often discussed in the same breath since they are so interrelated: nearly half of all inhabitable land is used for food production!

🌲 From the above graph, you can clearly see that there’s tensions between land use for forest conservation vs agriculture, so it’s no surprise that food production is the biggest driver of deforestation; in fact, agriculture causes between 90-99% of all tropical deforestation (Wagenigen, 2022)!

🪚 The vast majority of global deforestation occurs in the tropics, with Brazil & Indonesia together accounting for almost half. While both are due to agriculture, there are slightly different reasons for both: in Latin America it’s mostly driven by pasture expansion for beef, whereas in Southeast Asia it’s driven by commodities such as palm oil (Our World in Data, 2021).

🌴 One of the biggest threats to Indonesian deforestation is the expansion of massive industrial monoculture palm oil plantations; in 2023 industrial plantations grew by 116,000 hectares, a 54% increase from the 2022 (Nusantara Atlas, 2024).

📉 There are some positive news: the rate of deforestation is actually at a record low in Indonesia, with rates of annual deforestation in Indonesia reduced by 90% since 2015 (NICFI, 2023). However, absolute deforestation is still a problem with the country is still losing over 110 thousand hectares of forest every year (Indonesian Ministry of Environment & Forestry, 2022). Deforestation is especially a major concern in Southeast Asia due to the importance of peatlands.

Southeast Asia is home to over half of the world’s peatlands but about 25 million hectares of it have been deforested and/or degraded over the last three decades alone, leaving only 6% of peatlands untouched. When peatlands are logged or drained are enormously flammable, leading to the release of carbon into the atmosphere, and turning one of the planet’s most efficient long-term carbon sinks into a GHG emission source (WRI, 2022).

Indonesia’s peatlands in particular are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than any other peatland system in the world…

🛡️ That’s why focusing on peatland protection and restoration is such a critical piece of combatting the negative climate impacts of land use change in Southeast Asia in particular.

🔥 After the especially terrible Indonesian peatland fires in 2015—which released more GHG emissions than the entire US economy between September to October of the year—the Indonesian government ended up creating a Peatland Restoration Agency (BRGM) in 2016 focused on employing three strategies for peatland restoration: rewetting, revegetation, and revitalization (The Diplomat, 2024). However, this work and other solutions needs to be accelerated further.

🧑🏻‍🔬 Scientific feasibility studies have shown that with careful mapping, peatland restoration can be sustained by even modest carbon credit prices of USD 2-37 and lead to fire risk reduction of up to 37% (IOP Science, 2022). Moreover, such developments can be much more successful if paired with paludiculture, which is “the productive land use of wet and rewetted peatlands that preserves the peat soil and thereby minimizes CO2 emissions and subsidence” (Wetlands International, 2021), to cultivate crops sustainably without having to degrade such land resources.

🌱 While it’s critical to restore natural resources such as peatlands and mangroves that serve as nature-based solutions given the fact that they’re such large carbon sinks, we must also keep in mind the underlying land rights of the indigenous populations as well. The term “green grabbing” describes cases where land grabbing occurs for purportedly environmental reasons with little concern for the indigenous inhabitants of that land (Brot Fur Die Welt, 2016). We will be discussing inclusive nature-based solutions in more depth along with our co-author, Terratai, in next week’s issue!

📚 Want to learn more about this topic?

1. “Land Use” from Our World in Data

2. “Deforestation” from Our World in Data

3. “Rewetting Indonesia’s Degraded Peatlands – A Natural Climate Solution” from Stanford Energy

📢 Shout-outs to Masungi Georeserve & Bumibaru!

🦸🏻 Masungi Georeserve is a youth-led conservation project supported by geotourism and education located right outside the capital of Metro Manila in the Philippines, building on a successful 20 year restoration record began by conservationists and engineers. Its current focus is in restoring the upper reaches of a critically deteriorated watershed impacting about 20 million Filipinos in the Metro area.

⚖️ After 7 years, it has overcome over 5 large-scale land speculation and syndicated attempts as it spoke truth to power, successfully caused the cancellation of illegal quarry agreements that threatened to level 1,300 hectares of the watershed, involved 100 locals as rangers, and put together trails and ranger stations to continuously protect existing forests while nurturing new ones. 

💚 Pursuing nature-based solutions like this is critical in a mega-diverse country of the world whose strongest opportunity lies in the sustainable use of its natural resources and biodiversity while also being among the most vulnerable countries to the climate crisis—amidst an environment that has become one of the deadliest countries in the world for land defenders. 

📣 Follow their movement on Facebook and Instagram. Use the #SaveMasungi hashtag to show support. Additional support in policy and advocacy are helpful for the Masungi team.

🌏 Human damage to the planet’s land is accelerating, with up to 40% now classified as degraded, thus hampering the world’s ability to feed a growing population. In Indonesia alone, more than 48 million hectares of land is degraded and it’s growing.

🍌 Bumibaru’s approach to land restoration is to bring back humus and microorganisms by leveraging Enhanced Rock Weathering followed by manure-induced Biochar. They have proven that they could restore 2 hectares of degraded land into a fertile corn field in West Java. They are now undertaking a project to restore 16 hectares of degraded land in Central Kalimantan with banana intercropped with pineapple and watermelon, crops that can sequester even more CO₂ than corn.

🏞️ They estimate that by the end of the year they can sequester at least 576 tonnes of carbon, while providing 160 tonnes of healthy crops and increasing the economic output of the local villagers by more than 30%.

📋 They are currently looking for more people to join our team, mainly agronomists and carbon soil researchers to help them scale and restore more land.

🗞️ Recent News

🎙️ Interview with Reuben of Arkadiah

💡 Why were you initially inspired to tackle land use/nature-based solutions to begin with?

🌳 Aside from fossil fuels, deforestation, agriculture, and land use significantly contribute to the greenhouse gas emissions in Southeast Asia. We see potential in nature-based solutions like reforestation and agroforestry, but the scarcity of projects is tied to insufficient capital, manual processes, and regulatory hurdles. 

🔍 Recognizing the urgency, we're leveraging technology to introduce traceability, transparency, and trust, aiming to unlock project financing and scale up land restoration, ultimately safeguarding our region's ecosystem.

🛠️ How exactly is Arkadiah taking action against this problem?

📡 Our proprietary platform uses AI, LiDAR, satellite imagery and ground truthing to provide transparent and verifiable data with scientific rigour. 

💻 Digitizing the end-to-end process for project developers, landowners and corporations, our platform streamlines deployment of nature-based climate solutions, such as reforestation and agroforestry for high quality carbon removal and advancing biodiversity-rich ecosystems.

⬆️ Through this transformative technology, we are eager to accelerate project funding opportunities and scale needed land restoration to bring the highest quality carbon removal and biodiversity credits in Asia.

😲 What is a misconception or surprising fact about land use/nature-based solutions?

⚫ Until now, the climate conversation—even nature-based solutions—has been very focused on removing carbon dioxide. 

🔬 We do not view carbon as the enemy; when used strategically, carbon becomes an integral part of the transformative solution multiplier that nature provides to address the triple threat of climate crisis, biodiversity collapse and food security challenges.

☕️ For example, we are working on an agroforestry project with a coffee plantation in the Philippines to simultaneously sequester carbon, reduce agricultural emissions, preserve biodiversity and boost livelihoods - making it a quadruple win against the climate crisis.

🎬 What actions can readers support Arkadiah?

🤝 We are always excited to connect with people who share our passion to revitalize landscapes. If you are looking to invest in high quality carbon removal projects, please reach out to us at www.arkadiahrestores.earth.

🦸🏻 What do you do when you’re not saving the world?

🛋️ I love spending time with my family 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 and immersing myself in nature 🍃 through sports 🏸

⏭️ Next week, we’ll be discussing our food systems’ value chain with our co-author, Teratai, so stay tuned!

❓ Did you enjoy this week’s issue? If yes, please do forward to your friends who would enjoy the read as well. Also, feel free to let us know what you thought by giving us feedback at [email protected].

🌊 SEA you next week!

Karina & Massimiliano