Indonesia feels the heat

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.