Tropical peat swamp forest provides many ecosystem services to communities of local people in Indonesia, as well as to national and international communities. However, many Indonesian peatlands are degraded and thus susceptible to burning in the dry season and flooding in the wet season. Peat fires are a local, regional, national and international disaster, but the people most affected are those who live and work on peat at ground level whose livelihoods, health and children's education are highly vulnerable to such disasters. This article aims to assess the vulnerability of people and communities living on peatlands, and to understand the factors causing community vulnerability. We focused our study on the peat-dominated Tumbang Nusa Village in Central Kalimantan. The primary data for this study were collected by field observation and interviews with 52 villagers who were selected through stratified random sampling. We aimed to understand livelihoods, locations of the villagers' activities, agricultural technology applied in peatlands, community efforts to mitigate climate disasters, and participation in development programmes. Vulnerability was calculated as a function of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity, using IPCC methodology. The results show that the Tumbang Nusa community has a high degree of vulnerability, primarily owing to fire and flood. Additionally, the community relies on ecosystem services from a damaged environment and employs land management practices that are often unsustainable. Understanding the causes of vulnerability will help improve rural communities' development programmes and the design of empowerment programmes to reduce vulnerability.
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