Law enforcement, incentives needed to curb fires: Emil

JAKARTA (JP): Stringent law enforcement and greater economic incentives are needed to curb the use of fire in land clearing activities by plantation companies and forest concessionaires, a respected environmentalist said yesterday.

Former state minister of environment Emil Salim reiterated here yesterday the need to prevent a repeat of forest fires started by slash-and-burn land clearing practices.

Emil said, however, that before they can open land, companies need four different licenses from the ministries of agriculture and forestry, the provincial administration and the National Land Agency. All licenses prohibit the use of fire in clearing land.

"But enforcement has been weak," he said.

Emil was addressing the launch of the World Wide Fund for Nature's Asia-Pacific Forest Map 1997 which showed how deforestation had caused 88 percent of the region's virgin forest to disappear. Furthermore, only five percent of the remaining forest were protected.

He said fire was used because it was the cheapest means for clearing a vast area of land compared to other methods such as bulldozing.

Emil said reducing the use of fire to clear land was also a matter of economics. He said that bulldozers should be made cheaper to encourage more companies to use them, while higher retributions should be imposed on companies using fire to clear land.

Up to last September, about 97,700 hectares of forest -- 26,500 hectares protected and conservation forest and 70,200 hectares of production forest -- have been razed by the fires, causing an estimated Rp 45.7 billion (US$13 million) in losses. Sumatra and Kalimantan have been most affected by the fires, but Irian Jaya and Java have also been affected.

The resulting haze and smog blanketed not only Indonesian regions, but also neighboring Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Brunei Darussalam and even Thailand.

Emil said people were just starting to realize the high social and economic costs of using fire to clear land, citing the health problems affecting millions and the disruption in transportation resulting from the haze.

Also speaking at yesterday's forest map launch was professor Jeffrey A. Sayer, who is also the secretary-general of the Bogor- based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

Sayer urged the government to carefully preserve and manage its peat forests to avoid environmental disasters such as that which has covered much of Southeast Asia in choking smog.

Sayer said that using fire to clear forests for agriculture could pose longer term problems.

Sayer highlighted the case of peat forests in Central Kalimantan. In 1995, President Soeharto commissioned a giant one million hectare project to convert peat forest into a new rice bowl for Indonesia's population of more than 200 million people.

"It looks good and the intention is probably quite good," Sayer said.

"But what (Indonesia) should really be aiming for is getting a real fine pattern of appropriate use of those areas that are good for rice and forests, but these areas don't come in million hectare lots. They come in little bits," he said.

Sayer said fire had been used to clear the peat swamps in Kalimantan and Sumatra for agriculture in recent months, contributing to the smog covering much of Southeast Asia.

He said the swamps had a key role as they acted like giant sponges absorbing monsoon rain in the wet season and releasing the moisture slowly during the dry season.

"If all those peat lands or even a large proportion of them are burned or otherwise destroyed there will be many long-term implications for the hydrological cycles of the areas concerned," Sayer said. (aan)