Sustainable Peat Monitoring Platform
The platform to monitor peat-restoration efforts, encourage forest fire prevention, and educate the public.
Pantau Gambut (Pantau= Monitoring, Gambut= Peat) is an exciting and challenging project with mounds of opportunities to create something impactful and worthwhile. We collaborate and synergize with different teams, partners, local CSOs (Civil Service Organizations) and communities on this non-profit initiative to develop a technically complex and content-driven platform.
The Vision
In collaboration with World Resources Institute (WRI) Indonesia & 19 local NGOs across Indonesia, we believe that in order to encourage people to take action and restore peatlands in Indonesia, there should be a pool of information that they can easily access — where commitments to peat restoration can be tracked in detail. The online platform leads in the most updated, contextual, and relevant information about peat while facilitating the users to look up any information related to peat.
The Platform
A dynamic data-oriented homepage to educate, engage, and push transparency.
Together with our development partner–Catalyze Communications, content-experts-WRI Indonesia and community manager–Madani, we created a dynamic web platform that focuses on producing updated peat-related content while keeping the peat restoration players and commitment actors accountable. These content are supplied by local CSOs located across the 7 priority restoration provinces — Jambi, Riau, South Sumatera, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, and Papua. These CSOs collect peat related data along with its restoration activities which are processed and edited to be uploaded to the website. By creating a dynamic and informative resource, it gives the audience a reason to return to the website in comparison to a static landing page.
For peat newbies to peat experts
Four main features: Monitor Commitments, Restoration Map, Share Your Stories, and Learn about Peat.
We believe it is important to keep the platform versatile for new users as well as peat restoration key players such as local CSOs, the Indonesian government, and private sectors. The four main features serves as a starting point for users to engage with the website. Features such as ‘Learn about Peat’ caters to users who are new to the subject and would like to learn more about the topic. However, other features of the website can be powerful tools for CSOs to track national or local commitment and restoration activities across Indonesia.
1. Monitor Commitments
“To restore a total of 2 million hectares of peatlands within 5 years”
— Joko Widodo, Indonesian President 2016
Pantau Komitmen (Commitment Monitor) feature enables the public to keep up with commitment progress, challenges, and solutions made by public officials and other stakeholders in peatland restoration. We provide the users with two views: timeline (time-based) or grid (overall view). Researchers can choose either views to see quantitative progress and to monitor national & local commitments. Graphical data are provided to visualize analysis.
2. Restoration Map
Viewing information in a contextual & localized way
The Peta Restorasi (Restoration Map) displays Indonesia’s total area of peatland, hotspots, national & local commitments, various restoration activities & its actors, and local peat-related stories. It encompasses all the data collected and displays them in a location-based view. This feature enables users to get contextual and localized information pertaining to the their needs. New users can easily get started with the map through ‘onboarding’ screens to give a general idea what the map can be used for and select a preset upon their first entry. Additionally, we included insights to accompany the website’s raw data to produce a richer and more contextualized information. For example, users get an overview of where restoration activities take place and peatlands the cover Indonesia.
3. Share your Stories
Stories to create empathy through experiences in and around Indonesian peatland
Berbagi Cerita (Share Stories) is a section that focuses on local stories focusing on impact and actions. These stories are created by local farmers with traditional peat processing (kearifan lokal), users reporting from the field, and locals whose life are dependent on peat. The goal of these stories is to build empathy towards people living around the peat area and inform the readers about the successes of sustainable farming on peatland.
4. Learn
Guided learning for the curious
This feature focuses on the educational aspect of the website. As other features are catered toward experts, Pelajari (Learn) is specifically designed to educate and bring awareness about the peatland restoration topic. The section is filled with visuals and rich-content knowledge about peat, restoration movements, hotspots, and more.
The Pelajari feature is categorized into chapters to provide contextual learning and to allow people to jump into a particular topic they are interested in. By using images and videos, Pelajari presents easy-to-digest content for the general public.
Next Steps
Pantau Gambut aims to be a sustainable platform populated with updated content on a daily basis. We rely on the amazing work done by our partners, network of local CSOs, and local communities to provide content. Our team is also actively finding ways to make the data collection processes to be as seamless as possible. So stay tuned for our next upcoming initiatives with Pantau Gambut!
Check out how we made peat a hot topic here
