Reckless farming in peatland forests major cause of fires

Fitri Wulandari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The forest fires raging in Kalimantan are a result of a natural phenomenon combined with human recklessness.

Indonesia has the most extensive area of tropical peat land in the world, with 27 million hectares scattered throughout West and Central Kalimantan, Merauke and Nabire in Irian Jaya and along the east coast of Sumatra.

Peat land is organic soil that has formed for over thousands of years from decomposed vegetation and other life forms and it can go down as far as seven meters. It contains hydrocarbon, which makes it flammable. Once a fire starts there, it is difficult to put out because the peat content keeps the heat below the surface.

Most of the forests in Kalimantan and Sumatra are peat swamp forests that can easily burn.

This natural condition has been aggravated by shifting cultivation. People often burn forests and shrubs when opening land up for farming in Kalimantan and Sumatra.

In 1995, the Soeharto government embarked on an ambitious plan to convert over one million hectares of peat moss land in Central and South Kalimantan into rice-producing areas. The project was believed to have caused an escalation in forest fires in recent years.

In 1999, forest fires razed 510,177 hectares of forests, of which 508,000 hectares or 99 percent were in the province of East Kalimantan. The extent of the area devastated by fires was much worse than in 1998, when 300,000 hectares of forest were burned to the ground.

The indigenous Dayak people in Kalimantan have developed a system to prevent fires from spreading while they clear peat land for farming.

Unfortunately, migrants from Java and other areas outside Kalimantan who do not know how to manage peat land, recklessly burn the vegetation there. Oil palm plantation owners also prefer to clear forests by burning the vegetation to keep production costs low.

In the meantime, there has been no real effort from the government to educate people in this matter. It is not surprising that forest fires will continue to be an annual catastrophe for many years to come.