Fidelis E. Satriastanti Jakarta Globe 12 Sep 11;
The unrelenting thick haze blanketing parts of Sumatra has now prompted Malaysia to complain and forced some flights in Indonesia to be rerouted.
The neighboring country’s environment minister, Douglas Uggah Embas, has sent a letter to the Indonesian government regarding hundreds of high-temperature hot spots on Sumatra, which are likely the result of fires started as part of land-clearing efforts, according to Malaysian news agency Bernama.
Arief Yuwono, Indonesia’s deputy minister for environmental damage control, said on Sunday that he had not yet received the letter, but said the Environment Ministry would conduct an investigation into the claim.
He said he would consult with Indonesian authorities on the location of fires and recent wind patterns to establish whether any haze over Malaysia was likely to be the result of blazes in Indonesia.
The deputy minister said the situation in Sumatra would likely be on the agenda at an upcoming gathering of environment ministers from member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, including Indonesia and Malaysia. The two-day meeting, starting on Sept. 22 and to be held in Bangkok, is part of an annual series to discuss transboundary haze issues.
The Sumatra haze has also affected flights. Lion Air diverted planes on the route between Jakarta and Jambi, a province in southern Sumatra, because of low visibility.
“The planes could not land in Jambi because of thick smog and the pilot decided to land in South Sumatra,” said Edward Sirait, Lion Air’s director. The airline operates three flights per day to Jambi.
Edward said it was the first time this year Lion Air had been required to abort a landing and divert a plane due to thick haze.
“We will keep on landing in South Sumatra until the conditions improve in Jambi,” he said, adding that other destinations had not been affected by haze.
Arief said land and forest fires were difficult to manage because there were few signs of the coming rainy season. “At the moment, Jambi’s haze is quite thick, different from Riau and South Sumatra, which have already experienced rain,” he said.
“We have already deployed rain-making aircraft to try and prevent fires. However, the fires are becoming more unpredictable because we are supposed to be entering the rainy season this month, but so far there has been no rain.”
Three CASA 212-200 aircraft were deployed on Friday — two went to South Sumatra and one to Riau — to begin 30 days of rain-inducing operations starting today.
The initial targets for the operations are Riau, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan, but the latter two were dropped because they have already entered the rainy season.
“For Jambi, we need to look at the data first, before we take any further steps, especially if we decide to conduct rain-making operations there,” Arief said.
He added that the ministry was working with local police to investigate instances of slash-and-burn activity. “We will have a meeting with local police on Tuesday or Wednesday to start law enforcement over these practices,” he said.
Sumatra fires worsen as dry season peaks
Officials use cloud seeding to induce rain and stop spread of fires
Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja Straits Times 13 Sep 11;
JAKARTA: Forest and plantation fires have intensified in recent days in southern and central Sumatra as Indonesia's dry season hits a peak, casting a blanket of haze over parts of neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore.
Singapore's daily PSI registered a reading of 66 as at 9pm last night, which is in the moderate range. This was higher than the reading of 55 (moderate) on Sunday and 41 (good) on Saturday.
The dry hazy conditions have caused some concern as Singapore gears up for the Sept 23-25 Formula One night race, and Palembang and co-host Jakarta prepare to host more than 6,000 athletes to the biennial SEA Games in November.
Malaysia has complained to Indonesia about the haze, which has caused air quality to drop in many areas.
The town of Tanjung Malim in Perak recorded the highest reading of 107 at 5pm yesterday, falling into the 'unhealthy' range. Subang and Petaling Jaya had the lowest recorded visibility of 3km and 4km respectively at 4pm.
The Indonesian authorities have used cloud seeding to induce rain in a bid to cool temperatures and to prevent the fires from spreading.
The rainy season in Indonesia is not expected to start until late this month, according to weather officials.
The national disaster management agency is coordinating the efforts of the various local authorities as well as the Meteorological, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), which are focused on South Sumatra province, about 400km away from Singapore.
On Sunday, South Sumatra was found to have 135 hot spots while Jambi province in central Sumatra had 30, BMKG data showed. The number of hot spots in West Kalimantan province has also been rising in the past week.
Jambi is the worst-hit by the haze because of its proximity to the hot spots in South Sumatra.
Last Friday, flights at its Sultan Thaha Syaifuddin airport could not take off until late afternoon because of poor visibility.
A minimum visibility level of 1.8km is required for landing and 1km for take-off, according to Mr Olan Simanjuntak, an information officer at the airport.
'We have had planes diverted to Pa-lembang airport because of the very bad haze here. Other planes were told not to fly here,' said Mr Olan, who spoke to The Straits Times on the phone from Jambi.
Rain could be on the way.
'The haze is carried by the winds that are mainly northerly and north-easterly there. But now clouds have begun to form above South Sumatra, the northern part of Jambi, which according to our satellite images, have the potential to trigger rain,' said Mr Kukuh Ribudiyanto, head of the extreme weather desk at BMKG.
Padang in West Sumatra province and Pekanbaru in Riau province have had intermittent rain in the past few days.
Every year, farmers and plantation companies clear their land for planting. But many of them often use the cheaper but illegal slash and burn method, which is the chief cause of haze. South Sumatra has many oil palm and rubber plantations.
Mr Mukri Priatna, head of advocacy at the Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi), hailed the government's ongoing efforts to put out the fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan.
'But enforcing the laws against those who are responsible for the fires is most important to putting an end to this annual fire affair. Currently, a party responsible for starting a fire could get away easily.'
Indonesia Smokes Up its Neighbors
Asia Sentinel 12 Sep 11;
Haze from illegal logging, oil palm planting becomes a hazard
Despite numerous promises by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that it would stop, the burning of Indonesia’s rainforest is continuing, to the point where the haze is so thick that schools are closing, airplanes are being diverted and has reached the point where 60 percent of Malaysia is experiencing moderate pollution.
Indonesia’s immediate neighbors are expected to bring up the choking haze on Sept. 22 at a two-day meeting of environment ministers from member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to be held in Bangkok. The meeting is part of an annual series to discuss cross-boundary haze issues, so far to no avail.
In May, Yudhoyono signed a much-publicized two-year moratorium as part of a US$1 billion climate deal with Norway for emissions credits to cut global levels of greenhouse gases. However, Indonesia’s forestry ministry makes billions of dollars handing out permits to oil palm plantations to clear forest for oil palm production. The moratorium has been described as a disaster by environmentalists who say it is full of loopholes that favor the oil palm companies.
Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of palm oil, the country’s fourth largest export category, contributing 8.54 percent of export earnings to the country’s coffers. In addition, although agriculture provides only 15.3 percent of gross domestic product, it employs 38.3 percent of the population. Indonesia is also the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, much of it from illegal the logging of primary forest and burning the remains and the peatlands that undergird the forest.
The government has said it intends to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases by 26 percent against current levels, now producing something on the order of 2.05 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. Almost 80 percent of Indonesia’s current emissions stem from deforestation and land use change. Indonesia’s ability to control greenhouse gases is important because, according to the United Nations, 15-20 percent of the world’s gas reduction potential will come from forest and peat.
Behind the haze, however, is an even denser air of bureaucratic inertia and entrenched corruption that continues to thrwart the aims of the international compact known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). REDD had proposed including secondary forest as well as untouched primary forest, less and less of which continues to exist each year. Officials estimate that some 35 million hectares have already been degraded. The forestry ministry can’t agree on how much primary forest remains and is subject to REDD, saying 55 million hectares of primary forest are subject to the moratorium. The president’s office, however, says it should be 64 million hectares of primary forest and another 20 million hectares of peatlands.
Despite the complicated plans for REDD, the burning is continuing unabated. It appears likely to stay that way. A deeply detailed article in August by Reuters news service reporters described just one multimillion dollar project covering 90,000 hectares that had been intended as a showcase forest preservation project. It was near collapse, however, “a casualty of labyrinthine Indonesian bureaucracy, opaque laws and a secretive palm oil company” that wanted the deep peatland forest for development. After the expenditure of more than US$2 million in development costs, the project was cut in half by the forestry ministry, making it unviable.
The ministry, according to the article, earns $15 billion a year in land permit fees from investors. Those fees are regarded as a limitless source of corruption for forestry officials and politicians. Indonesia Corruption Watch, a private watchdog, was quoted by Reuters as saying illegal logging and violations in issuing forest use permits deliver ill-gotten gains estimated at Rp20 trillion ($2.3 billion) each year.
In the meantime, Indonesia’s neighbors are getting fed up with the haze, which occurs every year but seems worse in 2011. The Malaysian Environment Minister, Douglas Uggah Embas, last Friday sent a letter to his Indonesian counterpart, Gusti Muhammad Hatta, complaining about the hundreds of fires on Sumatra that have blanketed his country in smoke. Routinely school children are issued thousands of face masks in Johor and Negeri Sembilan provinces of Malaysia because of the smoke. Tourism in the resort city of Penang has often been badly affected by the haze.
Embas was quoted by the national news agency Bernama as saying Malaysia would push for the establishment of a regional fire-fighting squad to combat fires in ASEAN member countries. That pretty much comes down to Indonesia as the culprit.
Singapore has also expressed concern that haze from fires in Riau Province, across the Strait of Malacca, could affect the Formula 1 race and qualifying round scheduled from Sept. 23-25. There are fears that the racers, in cars which reach speeds over 300 kilometers per hour on Singapore’s streets at night, will be unable to see far enough ahead to negotiate the track.
Lion Air, now Indonesia’s biggest private airline, said it was diverting flights on the route between Jakarta and Jambi, a southern Sumatran province. Officials said it was the first time this year that the airline had been forced to divert a flight because of thick haze. Indonesia was deploying three aircraft for a month to South Sumatra and Riau to attempt to sow clouds with silver iodide crystals in an attempt to induce rain. Rain has already started in West and Central Kalimantan, on Borneo, so the rainmakers will skip those two areas.
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