The 4th workshop in Sustainability and Resilience was conducted in 3 days from November 27-29, 2017 in Bali. The participants come from various stakeholders from the university, government, researchers, and private sectors such as Bappenas, Energy and Mineral Resources Department of West Sumatra, University of Andalas, Energy and Mineral Resources Department of Bali, University of Udayana, Stockholm Environmental Institute, and su-re.co.
November 27, 2019
On the first day of the event, all stakeholders share their idea and experiences in low carbon development. On that day, our young interns, Meredith Holland from USA and Fabian Peri from Indonesia represented su-re.co to share our idea for low carbon development in Indonesia.
There are three background issues behind the idea of promoting agroforestry and organic fertilizer such as monoculture practices in Indonesia, the use of synthetic fertilizer, as well as food loss and food waste.
Why is wrong with those 3 issues?
In Indonesia, monoculture is still becoming the common agricultural technique, though in fact, monoculture is extremely water- and fertilizer-intensive and has also caused deforestation. Meredith and Fabian gave an example from the case in Sulawesi’s maize monoculture. There are approximately 1400 tons of soil/hectare/year eroded from extreme weather conditions, meaning that lots of CO2 is released into the atmosphere.
Synthetic Fertilizers also contributes to 10% of Indonesia’s emissions in agricultural sector. Moreover, Indonesia was leading the market of Indonesia is leading the market of synthetic fertilizers in Southeast Asia in 2013. This presentation also shows that Indonesia has the highest rate for food loss/waste per capita in the world, with about 13 million tons of food wasted every year.
Shifting to agroforestry
This presentation tries to introduce and develop agroforestry in Indonesia as an alternative for monoculture as agroforestry is not yet prevalent. Agroforestry has the potential to absorb 30 million tons of carbon in Indonesia. Aside from decarbonizing, agroforestry can improve soil fertility, create more resilient crops, and enhance habitat diversity. It also increases economy stability and assists the reduction of smallholder farmer’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change by improving production and diversifying enterprises with greater income distribution over time. One of the successful cases of agroforestry implementation in Indonesia, namely in Kendilo East Kalimantan, where endemic trees have been planted with rice, maize, and vegetables.
Consider using organic fertilizer
By creating a better waste management system, food waste/loss can be separated and used for organic fertilizer. Just like su-re.co’s biogas digester, we can take food waste from farming households and put it into the biogas digester to produce biogas, a renewable form of energy, and bioslurry, which can be used as a source of organic fertilizer. Su-re.co in collaboration with BMKG and Stockholm Environment Institute has started implementing this idea through climate field school to introduce agroforestry and biogas digesters in both rural and urban areas.
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