Every Thursday night, the men of Tanjung Makmur village on the Indonesian island of Sumatra gather in the mosque for sunset prayers. Afterwards, they sit together to recite Surah Yasin, the 36th chapter of the Koran, which they believe sends prayers to the dead. But on one December evening in 2019, in the ritual took an unexpected turn.

Mustangin, a local cleric, closed the prayers for the dead with a discussion of a religious edict against environmental destruction. This time was usually reserved for reciting the surah in Arabic, without discussing its meaning. But that evening, Mustangin saw fit to overturn the usual tradition.

The village of Tanjung Makmur is found in South Sumatra’s vast peatlands, much of which have been cleared of the trees that naturally cover them and drained so they can be used for plantations and farming. These deforested regions have acidic, nutrient-poor soil. Many choose to burn the land before planting crops, which can improve its fertility.

But restoring peatland, rather than burning it, is currently one of Indonesia’s priorities to reduce its annual carbon emissions. Worldwide, peatlands in their natural waterlogged state can sequester 0.37 Gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) every year, as the organic matter that falls into them can’t rot as they are not exposed to the air. But, if drained and dried, the stored organic carbon begins break down and is released as carbon dioxide.

Peatland that has been degraded in this way is also vulnerable to wildfires, which release vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere. Overall, degraded peat is responsible for an estimated 5% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions globally each year.

In Tanjung Makmur, Mustangin saw evening prayers as a way of starting a conversation about the issue with the villagers. Local practices of clearing land through burning can spark Indonesia’s infamous wildfires. “I told them that it is haram [forbidden] for us as Muslims to burn the land,” Mustangin says.

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Mustangin had been given training as part of an initiative from the country’s highest Islamic authority, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI). Working with Indonesia’s Peatland Restoration Agency (BRG) and the Center of Islamic Studies in National University (UNAS) since 2018, they have trained hundreds of local clerics to promote peatland restoration in communities in Sumatra and Kalimantan, home to majority Muslim populations.

“Wherever we travel to villages in rural areas, we would find that religious figures play a crucial role in social life,” says Fachruddin Mangunjaya, senior conservationist at UNAS. The hope was that environmental fatwas issued by the MUI, and promoted by local clerics and mosque activists, would be an effective way to encourage peatland restoration.