In Terkul village in Indonesia's Riau province, several men were busy piling up sacks of compacted soil on one side of a drainage canal under the scorching sun in mid-October, near the end of the dry season.
One by one, the sacks were used to fill a 3m by 2m wooden dam, built to retain the murky water inside the canal and raise the level of the water table to around 30cm to 40cm below ground level.
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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on December 17, 2019, with the headline Dams to quench Riau's slow burn, peatland restoration key in fight against forest fires. Subscribe