Expert calls for long term solutions to forest fires

BOGOR, West Java (JP): With the help of more than a dozen countries, Indonesia is currently going all-out in its fight against spreading brush and forest fires.

Dr Neil Byron is assistant director general of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), based in Bogor, working on international policy issues. He gave his views about the ongoing fires and called for long-term solutions in the following question and answer.

Question: How much is really known about the origins of the forest fires?

Answer: We do know that this is an El Nio year. A hot, dry summer across Southeast Asia was predicted at the beginning of the year. Yet virtually no precautions were taken before the onset of the drought.

Fires were lit as usual across Indonesia during this season by migrants, small farmers and large plantation companies alike. But there are no data on how many fires would normally occur in an average year in Indonesia, or what area is burned annually. No one can say how much worse 1997 is than "average" because, in effect, there are no data.

Q: We can guess the area burning must be huge. What extent of land and forest is really on fire?

A: No one really knows how much is burning or has been burned already this year, or even where the fires are now, let alone how fast they are spreading.

No one really knows what sort of land is on fire. Media reports have confused virgin rain forests, peat swamp forests, grasslands, and areas officially zoned and sanctioned for conversion to oil palm, rubber or timber plantations.

It makes a great difference not only to the social and economic costs of the fires, but even to the type of damage caused.

One reason the smoke-haze is more damaging to public health than usual is that many of these are "dirty fires". There's a lot of soil, green vegetation and debris casually and carelessly pushed into heaps to be burned by "fly-by-night" contractors working for estate companies. The sort of smoke depends on the type of vegetation fuel as well as the intensity of the fire.

Q: Who is lighting the fires?

A: Because we are not sure where the fires are, we can only guess who lit them and why. Almost all rural people have reasons for burning, and very few have any reason to not burn or to help prevent, let alone extinguish, these fires. Neighbors complain vociferously, but even Indonesians who are inconvenienced or threatened by the fires consider them "normal".

Q: What do we really know about the fires?

A: Just informed guesses... After the great fires in Kalimantan in 1983, which was another extreme El Nio event, there was a flurry of interest in fire prevention, detection, management and suppression. But this was not enough to lead to a system for collecting information about fires, or for prevention, or for public education about the dangers of fires in extreme weather conditions.

The 1991 El Nio produced pretty bad fires across much of Indonesia, but also little interest in reform or developing a national fire management system.

The 1994 El Nio was a bit worse -- Singapore was blanketed with smoke while airports across the region were closed for a month. But what did Indonesia learn from this? Very little.

Q: What about the consequences of these fires on people and the loss of biodiversity in forests?

A: We can see all the different types of costs: the closed airports, whole towns shut down, not to mention the loss of livelihoods for millions of people.

But we really have very little idea of the relative magnitudes of all these social, economic, public health and environmental costs.

Then there are all the direct costs of the feeble and probably futile attempts at suppression -- the firefighters, aircraft, cloud seeding...

There are the enduring costs of peat swamplands being permanently destroyed as well. One thing we can be sure of is that most of these costs are not borne by the people who light the fires.

Q: What to do next?

A: Tropical forest fires are often very different. Not all of the fires are accidental or out of control. Many are deliberate and quite targeted for land clearing. Many western techniques of suppression will be quite ineffective in facing the intensity of the very hot wildfires, and even less so when the peat ignites.

It is not just the vegetation above the ground on fire, but the ground itself is burning. It will continue to burn until the swamps are inundated in the next wet season. Such fires cannot be put out by fire hoses, aerial drops or light rain from cloud seeding.

Q: What is your overall conclusion?

A: The challenge is to learn from this year's disaster, and to develop a much clearer picture of what really happened and why. Even more importantly, we should try to learn from this nightmare to ensure that the same problems do not recur again the next time there is an El Nio which will probably be in about five to seven years.

It would be tragic for the people and the country if we all fail to learn and take effective measures before it is too late for the great Indonesian fires of 2002!