Preserving and restoring peatlands is critical for climate change mitigation, ecosystem health and community development in many parts of the world. But existing pressures lead to peatlands drainage and conversion to other land uses. These degraded peatlands can be targeted for restoration to reduce the loss of carbon and other important ecological services natural/undrained peatlands provide. Successful restoration of degraded tropical peatlands in Indonesia could mean significant progress towards country’s commitment for reducing emissions and meeting its NDC pledges while ensuring sustainable and equitable growth.

Indonesian peatland restoration follows strategies that target future sustainable land use and management, social justice, livelihoods and governance. These strategies underpin restoration activities such as re-wetting, re-vegetation, revitalization of communities and avoidance of peat fires. But effective long-term restoration must be carefully monitored to adapt designs, strategies and management approaches that can meet specified goals.

Availability of tested standard tools to assess the outcomes of restored ecosystems can help practitioners to determine successes and failures of peatland restoration. Availability of simple, easy to recognize, measurable indicators for monitoring progress over time can be very helpful. We developed robust, reliable, and practical set of criteria and indicators (C and I) to help assess progress and outcomes of peatland restoration through collaboration of relevant govt. institutions, expert consultations, and field verification at actual restoration sites. Using four broad categories (Bio-physical, Economic, Social and Governance) to determine restoration progress, we found identified C and I provide a reliable practical tool that can be used by mangers. This C and I approach can be applied to assess restoration progress at a site over time or to compare different restoration sites. In this presentation, we will share the set of C and I for peatland restoration monitoring and discuss the nuances of our iterative process to formulate these.