Human negligence intensifies Mother Nature's fury

Human negligence intensifies Mother Nature's fury

By Sugianto Tandra

JAKARTA (JP): A long drought and the resulting forest fires,
haze, famine and deaths that plagued Indonesia in the past year
have all been blamed on the El Nino weather pattern affecting the
region.

But at least one accusatory finger should have been pointed at
ourselves.

Human negligence resulted in the country's worst natural
disaster. Although authorities and experts issued early warnings
of the impending problems, few seemed to take heed of them.

But experts now agree that the fires which ravaged thousands
of hectares of forest and land in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi,
Irian Jaya, and Java, were partly caused by neglect as well as
ignorance about the pollution-induced changing global climate.

Reckless logging for domestic and export purposes, and
plantation companies' land clearing practices were cited as one
cause of the fires. On a smaller scale, slash-and-burn land
clearing activities by nomadic farmers was also to blame.

Altogether, they brought about an environmental catastrophe
labeled a "planetary disaster" by the World Wide Fund for Nature
(WWF).

Had it not been for the thick smog covering Kalimantan and
Sumatra and some parts of Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines
and Thailand -- resulting in an international outcry -- this
year's forest fires would have been dismissed as a routine annual
occurrence.

But this year, the impact was far worse.

The Ministry of Forestry, which assessed the damage caused by
fires which affected 165,000 hectares of forest, estimated a Rp
132 billion (US$26.4 million) loss. The figure does not include
ecological damage such as destroyed habitats and forest
ecosystems, or the financial losses of timber estates and
plantation companies.

More than 650 people died of drought-related diseases, while
many others are still in danger of malnutrition in remote areas
of Indonesia.

Still hundreds of others have died in traffic accidents blamed
on poor visibility because of the smog. For instance, a Garuda
Indonesia Airbus A-300 crashed in a haze-shrouded area while
approaching the North Sumatran town of Medan on Sept. 26, killing
all 234 people on board.

Across the country, 6,356 flights in 27 airports had to be
canceled because of poor visibility, resulting in a financial
loss of Rp 49.34 billion.

While officials have estimated the area of damaged forest at
about 300,000 hectares, the WWF and the Indonesian Environment
Forum (Walhi) have estimated the area to be more than one million
hectares.

This adds to the damage wrought by the 1982 fires which
affected about 3.6 million hectares of land and forest in East
Kalimantan. Experts said after 15 years, the forest and land had
not recovered.

"It is an international disaster that goes beyond the borders
of Indonesia," said Sayed Babar Ali, head of the World Wide Fund
for Nature.

State Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, who
fought a commendable battle against the fires, said it would take
hundreds of years for the forests to recover.

So huge was the impact of this year's fires that President
Soeharto, who declared the fires and the haze a national
disaster, had to make an unprecedented apology to the affected
neighboring countries in September. He apologized again the
following month.

Logging

Also this year, the government for the first time pointed at
large logging and plantation companies as being responsible for
the disaster.

Armed with satellite images, a visibly overwrought Sarwono
announced to the public in September that many of the fires had
started on land leased to large logging and plantation companies,
some even owned by politically well-connected tycoons.

He also said "uncivilized" businesspeople were to blame.

"Whatever is set on fire, will be completely burned down. Some
people only intended to burn one hectare but the fire spread way
beyond that," Sarwono said.

More than 100 companies had their wood-use permits revoked.
But repeated pledges by the President and some of his ministers
to crack down on those companies had little tangible effect,
while millions of innocent people had to pay the price.

Officials estimated 20 million people in the country,
including children, could suffer from the long-term carcinogenic
effects of exposure to the smoke.

For instance in Jambi, one of the hardest hit provinces in
Sumatra, air pollution rocketed above safety levels. At one time,
there was a dense 2,000 milligrams of suspended particles per
cubic meter of air.

The danger level is 100 milligrams.

A similar health alert was also sparked in Kuching, the
capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, Kalimantan, where
concentration of suspended particles reached 700 milligrams per
cubic meter.

Residents had to wear gas masks in the street. Officials said
there was a marked rise in the number of people suffering from
respiratory ailments, asthma and lung bronchitis.

The Indonesian government and Malaysia drew up contingency
plans to evacuate people in some of the hardest hit areas. The
huge scale of the disaster also prompted the international
community to send relief to victims and hundreds of personnel to
Indonesia to help fight the fires.

Late this year, the long-awaited rain started, putting out
some of the fires and clearing the haze. Eastern Indonesia,
however, remained parched. Food shortages and widespread disease
in remote Irian Jaya and Maluku provinces still posed a threat.

The costly price of negligence is still haunting us.

It hopefully bode well, therefore, that this year of
environmental disasters was closed by an Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) environmental ministers' meeting on haze.

At the end of their two-day conference on Dec. 22 and Dec. 23,
the ministers issued an action plan calling for, among others,
specific measures to prevent and monitor land and forest fires,
and to strengthen the capability to fight them.