Latest attempt to clear haze may be just hot air
Latest attempt to clear haze may be just hot air
Sharmilpal Kaur, The Straits Times, Asia News Network,
Singapore
Even as the United States wrapped up its battle against what
has been described as the biggest wildfire in the state of
Arizona, the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) were in the midst of ratifying the first
treaty they have signed together to combat the perennial haze
problem.
But if the world's richest and most powerful nation has taken
nearly a month and more than 4,400 trained firefighters to put
out its own fires, why should anyone expect debt-ridden Indonesia
to be able to do so easily?
That is one of the questions which some critics are now asking
about the ASEAN haze pact, which some view as being just hot air.
After the agreement has been ratified by at least six
countries, it will come into force.
It is essentially a framework for ASEAN countries to fight the
haze problem together, by setting out the obligations of the
members and the preventive measures and responses expected of
them.
But with haze already affecting parts of Kalimantan, is the
deal dead even before it is ratified?
Law lecturer Simon Tay, also chairman of the Singapore
Institute of International Affairs, has argued that as ASEAN
countries rarely sign a treaty together, when they do the deal is
treated very seriously.
Being the most concrete framework for tackling the haze to
date, the agreement attempts to get a few institutional
structures established.
For one, it establishes a voluntary fund to implement the
agreement.
To be known as the ASEAN Transboundary Haze Pollution Control
Fund, it is a possible avenue for cash-strapped countries,
especially Indonesia, to take to fight the haze, although this
will come to pass only if the voluntary contributions pour in.
Another body set in place is the ASEAN Coordinating Center for
Transboundary Haze Pollution Control.
This is expected to help member countries work together better
to manage the impact of land and forest fires, and the resultant
haze pollution.
The agreement is an improvement over previous moves to tackle
the haze, although it may not be the ultimate solution.
The haze of 1997 and 1998, which shrouded most of the region,
demonstrated the inadequacies of two earlier ASEAN attempts --
the 1995 regional Cooperation Plan on Transboundary Pollution and
1997's Regional Haze Action Plan.
The failure to deal with those fires resulted in damage
costing US$9 billion, with Indonesians themselves bearing the
brunt of it.
Enforcement, or rather the lack of it, has been given as a
major reason for the repeated failure of efforts to control the
land-clearing fires.
Local forestry departments in both Sumatra and Kalimantan
admit they do not have the tools or the people to fight large-
scale fires. Plantation and industrial forest owners use fires
illegally to clear land and are rarely prosecuted.
Although Indonesia has access to satellite mapping showing
fire locations, under existing Indonesian laws no fire-starter
can be prosecuted until the police have proven that the fire was
deliberately lit by the landowner.
More can be done, said Peter Moore, coordinator of Project
FireFight Southeast Asia, started in 2000 by two world
environment bodies -- the World Conservation Union and World Wide
Fund for Nature International.
He said: "There has been a number of prosecutions in Indonesia
and Malaysia and that is a very welcome development. But there is
still so much to be done."
So far, Indonesia has announced that it is prosecuting five
plantation companies for using fire to clear land.
This is dismal, considering that most of the time land is
cleared through burning.
Also familiar with the problems in Indonesia is Longgena
Ginting, campaign director for Walhi, a non-governmental
environment group.
He told The Straits Times: "There is a lack of enforcement and
there is a lack of capability and capacity to implement the
regulations.
"The indication of corruption is clear -- when the fire
happens, we find the implications that a company had started it
and it had tried to influence an official from Jakarta not to
report the activity that caused the fire.
"But this corruption is itself very difficult to prove."
Longgena also highlighted the fact that with Indonesia being
required to liberalize its oil palm plantation industry as part
of the International Monetary Fund's reforms for the country,
more forests will be cleared to make way for plantations, with
burning the likely method of choice.
So the root economic causes of the fires are not addressed by
the ASEAN agreement, which lacks teeth in other areas as well.
For example, the agreement calls for a central body to
coordinate regional cooperation and to act as a focal point to
fight the spread of the haze.
But this body cannot tell a country what to do, even if the
haze originating from it is choking its neighbors and causing
them to lose millions in tourism dollars and medical expenses.
Money and resources aside, there is also the question of
whether there is the political will to do something about the
fires and haze.
Alan Tan, associate professor and a law lecturer at the
National University of Singapore (NUS), who has been researching
the Indonesian forest fires for six years, said:
"One of the most important obligations under the agreement,
which is to take legal, administrative and/or other measures to
address the problem, depends very much on a state's political
will and capacity for action.
States like Indonesia, he said, "remain very stretched in
terms of their institutional, financial and technical capacities
to address the problem."
He noted that coordinated action among the environmental
officials and the forestry and agricultural sectors --
particularly at the local levels where the hot-spots are found --
is needed, given the vast archipelago and its several layers of
government.
Victor Savage, an associate professor who heads the Geography
department at NUS, noted that the agreement gives ASEAN a more
transparent and open system in which member states can work
together to minimize the haze.
"The unfortunate problem is that developers see the El Nino
issue as a convenient time to clear forest areas in a cheap and
effective manner."
To beat the haze, several suggestions were made by Euston
Quah, another associate professor and acting head of NUS'
economics faculty, in a paper on the haze just published in the
international journal World Development.
While fining perpetrators was one way, he said another
approach was to pay them not to carry out the burning.
But he added that the amount paid should be equal to or less
than the cost of the damage would be.
Quah also threw up the idea of banning the forestry and palm
oil industries from burning during the dry season. This way,
corporations could still resort to burning during the wet season,
but there would be less damage.
Taking this a step further, perhaps fires could be allowed to
burn at one go during the wet season, clearing the land for a
year or two. This could mean alternate haze years, with burning
banned during an El Nino year.
Perhaps allowing burning in a controlled manner might be
easier to achieve than enforcing a no-burning ban.
Either way, no one should expect a haze-free ASEAN any time
soon.