Sustainable Lowland Agriculture Development in Indonesia

For Indonesia's agricultural sector to continue to make a significant sustainable social and economic contribution, it will need to undergo a transformation. While the contribution of Indonesia's agriculture sector to national gross domestic product (13 percent) has declined greatly over the past three decades, it is still significant, ranking in third place in 2019 after the oil and gas processing sector (20 percent) and the non-oil and gas processing sector (18 percent). To ensure continued contribution of this sector, the Indonesian government has implemented a number of strategies and measures, including REDD+,1 low carbon development, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) action plans, and green growth strategies. However, despite these efforts, performance in terms of environmental sustainability indicators and contributions to smallholders' livelihoods, particularly in lowland areas, is still suboptimal. Indonesia's lowland areas, in particular, have significant potential to contribute to increased agricultural production, especially in the case of rice, but also for a range of other food and non-food commodities. Indonesia's lowlands cover about 20 percent of Indonesia's total area of which about half are peatlands. Most of this area is found on Indonesia's three largest islands (Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua) amounting to 33.7 million hectares, or about 25 percent of the total land area of these islands (World Bank 2018). Indonesia has the largest area of tropical peatlands of any nation, of which more than 90 percent are distributed in the lowland areas of these three islands. However, lowlands are also of great importance for biodiversity, including mangroves, peat swamp forest and freshwater swamp forest with their specific flora and fauna. Despite the significance of lowland agriculture for the achievement of higher levels of national economic growth and environmental sustainability and for improving rural livelihoods in Indonesia, lowland agriculture must overcome several challenges if it is to realize its full potential.