Indonesia feels the heat

Grahame Applegate, Center for International, Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, West Java

No sooner had the ink dried on the ASEAN Regional Haze Agreement last June when meteorologists announced El Nino was already well under way. It seems Indonesia and its neighbors are in for another six months of fires and smoke costing millions of dollars in economic losses, health costs and environmental damage.

While the approaching El Nino is not expected to spark anything like the conflagration of 1997-1998, fires have already started in Kalimantan and Sumatra. People in Pontianak are beginning to don face masks while in southern Thailand residents are being advised on safety measures.

We can expect any time now to hear calls for more fire fighting helicopters, fire trucks and perhaps even cloud seeding. These are all examples of the "suppression" response to Indonesia's fires -- dealing with fires by extinguishing them, not preventing them. And they are all examples of shortsighted policy.

Indonesia's commitment under the ASEAN haze agreement to work with its neighbors in monitoring and combating fires is commendable. But industry, local communities, and governments in Indonesia at all levels still need to do more to prevent fires rather than simply extinguish them.

This may be stating the obvious. But without an agreed-upon approach by all players to solve the underlying causes of fires, international relations will continue to be strained as smoke chokes the region and Indonesia's development will continue to be hampered by the enormous social and costs that fires inflict -- a cost estimated by CIFOR to be around US$3 billion in 1997-98.

The causes of fire are varied and the solutions are complex. Apart from the often legitimate but uncontrolled use of fire for clearing land, fires also result from accidents and arson. Both small farmers and large commodity producers use fire to clear land for gardens and rice fields, or for oil palm, pulp wood and rubber plantations.

These fires generate much of the haze that covers the region and are often the cause of accidental fires that seriously compound the problem.

Farmers, hunters and beekeepers clear undergrowth with fire, but the fires often escape into forests. Loggers also start fires accidentally, often through something as trivial as not properly extinguishing a cooking fire. If this happens in peatlands, the fires are almost impossible to put out.

Underlying the causes of fires is a complex web of poverty, development and good-governance issues. A significant governance factor and also a potential cause of conflict is the lack of a fair system for allocating land resources between poor indigenous peoples, migrants seeking a living and corporations expanding their investments.

Often the response to a perceived lack of equity is the use of arson to assert rights and drive competition away.

One study in Lampung in southern Sumatra by CIFOR and the International Center for Research in Agroforestry revealed 400 hectares of oil-palm and coconut plantation were burnt down by the local community who claimed traditional ownership of the land.

Poor communities often use arson to defend their perceived rights to land that companies have acquired under Indonesian law. It is a clash between traditional law and the law of the state that could add to existing levels of communal tension.

Dealing with such complex issues and accommodating all forest stakeholders is one of the country's major challenges.

Numerous useful policy recommendations have been made to national and regional governments. Common to these recommendations are the same two challenges that bedevil so much of Indonesia's efforts to care for its people -- listening to all stakeholders and implementing and impartially enforcing fair and appropriate laws.

Specific fire-related policy advice includes replacing the current impractical and unenforceable zero-burning policy with one that allows land clearing by judicious use of fire where appropriate, but bans it during extremely dry years. It includes implementing better management of land clearing fires in peat lands.

It also includes developing transparent systems that reconcile traditional land claims and modern law and thus discourage people from seeking their own searing brand of justice.

And it includes spending money on fire prevention systems, and on land clearing machinery and training for farming communities -- not wasting it on ineffectual fire-fighting equipment and suppression measures, such as the almost $1 million spent on cloud seeding in 1997-1998.

Prevention is indeed better than cure. Even the best-equipped fire force in the world will still needs the next monsoon to put out Indonesia's fires. Meanwhile the meteorological cauldron will be cooking up an even fierier El Nino to unleash on Southeast Asia.