Anu Lounela's talk discusses the social life of carbon and how it is produced into a new form of value in the context of Indonesia's National Peatland Restoration Program. The program aims to restore drained peatlands to wetlands, thereby creating what is considered to be a highly valuable peatland carbon store to mitigate climate change. Historically, Indonesian governments and companies have drained peatlands for agricultural production, timber, plantations and migration projects, transforming wetlands on the Indonesian side of Borneo into volatile and fire-prone landscapes. The inhabitants, indigenous Dayak groups, have lived in these wetlands (rawa) along the rivers and in the forests, harvesting forest products and practising small-scale agriculture and shifting cultivation, valuing flexibility and mobility. This has included draining peat swamps through small channels for various purposes. Reducing carbon emissions through peatland restoration requires new management practices and techniques, involving both discursive and practical work by local communities. The paper is an exploration of the social life of carbon as it becomes a new form of value to evaluate and measure human life and activities on peatlands.
Anu Lounela, VTT, is an anthropologist and university researcher at Social and Cultural Anthropology and Global Development Studies, University of Helsinki. She has been a University researcher in the Academy of Finland project Water and Vulnerability in Fragile Societies (2018-2022), and the responsible leader in the Kone Foundation funded project New Regimes of Commodification and State Formation on the Resource Frontier of Southeast Asia (2018-2023). In spring 2024, she will start as a university researcher at the University of Helsinki in the Kone Foundation -funded project REPAIR, where she will study wetland restoration and rehabilitation activities and how people participate, perceive and feel about them. Her research has focused on the relationships between humans and non-human actors in wetland formation processes, climate change, water issues and state formation on the Indonesian side of Borneo and in Java.
