Hazy problem

It's that time of the year again. Haze, due to billowing smoke from forest fires, has clouded many parts of the archipelago, particularly in Sumatra and Kalimantan. The haze is wreaking havoc with people's daily activities and becoming a health hazard. The lack of visibility has also disrupted flights and shipping services.

Our neighbors -- Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei -- are also affected whenever the wind blows in their direction. So far they have not complained too loudly.

As usual, the long dry summer has perpetuated the haze problems. But there seems to be no doubt today about the cause of these forest fires. They were deliberately lit to clear land and make way for new plantations, timber estates and new settlements under the government's transmigration program.

The fires got out of control because the dry weather makes the entire forest highly flammable. The sad reality is that this is a man-made, and really unnecessary, tragedy.

The fires come at a time when Indonesia has been widely criticized for the way it manages, or critics would say mismanages, its forestry resources.

It is abhorrent to learn that the practice of deliberately setting fires to clear up tracts of forest land is still permitted. Forest experts argue that the burning method is the fastest and cheapest but one does not have to be an expert to know that it is destructive too.

We draw little comfort from the government's threat to revoke the licenses of contractors who continue to set these fires. The blazes have already spread and gotten out of control. The threat, even if heeded, is only good at discouraging new fires from being started.

What we really want to hear is what the government is doing about the fires raging in parts of Indonesia right now. In spite of their reoccurrence, the nation appears to be completely helpless to prevent forest fires.

Our best hope is for the rain to fall soon and extinguish the smoldering fires. Judging from the exceptionally long drought seasons in the past, rain will not start falling until late September or October, if we're lucky. There is a possibility we may have to wait until November for relief.

It is deja vu. Every few years or so, we seem to have this problem. And each time there is little anyone can do except to wait for a downpour of rain. The only consolation today is that there is a greater consensus about who the culprits are.

In the past, everyone blamed everybody else. The government blamed the slash-and-burn nomadic farmers for causing the fires; non-governmental organizations blamed the forest concessionaires and plantation companies for their reckless practices of burning forests and the government for their lax control of these companies; and the forest estates and plantation companies pointed their fingers at the weather.

The nomadic tribes in Kalimantan, in spite of their slash-and- burn farming practices, have been ruled out as the perpetrators of these fires.

Studies have shown that these tribes have developed a knack for picking the right time and place for their burning without upsetting nature. They have lived on the land for generations and are unlikely to jeopardize their own survival by recklessly setting fires.

Thus the onus for preventing future fires falls on contractors -- usually large companies licensed to clear forest land -- and the government -- whose duty is to supervise their activities.

As we wait and pray for the rain, the government should start thinking of ways of preventing future forest fires. One effective step would be to toughen the legislation and regulations on clearing forest land.

The answer seems easy, but the political will to bring big businesses under control seems harder to come by.