Law enforcement, incentives needed to curb fires: Emil

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)