Restoring the provincial team's work
The October 29, 2026, national meeting on peat and mangroves was the newly formed BPGMN's first activity, Governor Herman Deru said, according to detikSumbagsel. He said South Sumatra had taken the initiative to host it to address forest and land fires more seriously.
Deru said the province's regional peat and mangrove restoration team had never been formally dissolved. Its programs were constrained by a lack of funding after its parent institution became inactive, leaving the province unable to support implementation.
South Sumatra holds about 10 percent of Indonesia's peat area, according to the governor. He put the province's affected peat hydrological area at roughly 2 million hectares, including about 1.27 million hectares of peat.
A renewed national agency
The push to resume the provincial team's work follows the creation of a new national body. Indonesia's previous peat and mangrove restoration agency, BRGM, was dissolved on December 31, 2024, according to Mongabay Indonesia. The government moved to revive a dedicated agency after severe forest and peat fires in 2026, with President Prabowo Subianto raising the idea of forming BPGMN after a limited meeting in late September.
Prabowo inaugurated BPGMN head Satyawan Pudyatmoko at the State Palace in Jakarta on October 15, 2026, according to the State Secretariat. Satyawan said the agency would focus on managing peat to suppress fires during extreme dry seasons and restoring burned or damaged peat and mangrove ecosystems.
Satyawan said he expected peat fires to decline gradually rather than stop immediately. The agency also plans to map more than 500 peat hydrological units, known as KHG.
