ASEAN agency warns RI of severe drought

ASEAN agency warns RI of severe drought

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The ASEAN Specialized Meteorological Center (ASMC) has warned
Indonesia of severe drought that might exacerbate haze in the
country between July and October this year.

Deputy State Minister of the Environment for Environmental
Conservation Liana Bratasida said on Monday that ASMC issued the
warning during a meeting in Manila, the Philippines last week.

"ASMC has warned us that although El Nino has weakened,
Indonesia must be alert to haze due to annual forest fires," she
told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

She called on the public not to clear land through burning
when converting forests into plantations and urged local
government to take legal action against those who still did that.

Last week, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) also
warned that East Kalimantan, the northern part of West Kalimantan
and Central Kalimantan would be hit by drought this year due to
their unusually low rainfall.

It also called on the public and companies there not to clear
land by using slash-and-burn methods as it would only result in
choking haze.

However, according to the Indonesian Forum on the Environment
(Walhi), cheap slash-and-burn methods were still used by
plantation firms and local people, as thick haze had started to
blanket Pekanbaru, Riau; Palembang, South Sumatra; and Pontianak,
West Kalimantan.

The haze has caused respiratory problems in Pontianak, with
the town's mayor Buchari Abdurrahman calling on his citizens to
put on masks. It also caused eye irritation in Pekanbaru and
Palembang.

Walhi claimed that plantation firms were emboldened to burn
land as the government appeared to have no intention to take
legal action against the perpetrators, despite the existence of
the ban.

The Ministry of Forestry, however, is still unsure about the
source of the haze, although it discovered over 227 hotspots in
Riau via satellite last Thursday.

The Ministry has not yet found any hotspots in West Kalimantan
and South Sumatra due to cloudy conditions.

Walhi executive director Longgena Ginting said that the
government must strictly enforce its ban on forest conversion and
land clearance through slash-and-burn.

"The ban must be seriously enforced ... which means that any
perpetrators that burn land must be put into jail," he said.
"Otherwise, we will see more damaging haze this year."

Director general of forest protection and natural conservation
I Made Subadia admitted that relevant ministries still worked
without coordination in tackling the haze problem.

Bodies charged with responsibility for tackling the haze
problem include the Ministry of Forestry, the Office of the State
Minister of the Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and
several national agencies.

"We are now putting together a coordinating team to tackle the
problem," he said.

He also said his ministry had deployed five brigades late last
year, each comprising over 100 personnel, to Riau, North Sumatra,
Jambi, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan, which are prone to
forest fires.

"We expect the brigades to be able to prevent forest fires and
if there are any, to contain them, " he said.

This year, the Ministry of Forestry will deploy 10 more
brigades in a number of locations including Bengkulu, West
Sumatra, South Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, and South Sulawesi.