Channel NewsAsia 15 Oct 12;
SINGAPORE: After falling steadily in the past six years, the number of haze-causing hotspots in Indonesia has suddenly spiked to numbers that now exceed those in 2006.
Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, said this is a "considerable backslide".
Singapore, as chair of the sub-regional Ministerial Steering Committee on Transboundary Haze Pollution, is actively promoting regional collaboration to address the haze problem, he told Parliament on Monday.
A new initiative the committee is looking into is using satellite mapping to identify companies whose concession areas see excessive fire outbreaks.
But the minister said law enforcement can only do so much.
He said: "There are several evidential difficulties with this. First, if you actually look at the list of concession map, you will realise that there is a lot of companies, shell companies, subsidiaries, joint ventures and a variety of business arrangements behind the clearing of lands and the planting of oil palms. So that's first level.
"Second level is that actually in order to achieve prosecution in court, you need to have caught the person in the act, circumstantial evidence on its own, probability may not be sufficient.
"The third difficulty is that, these are local crimes and need to be prosecuted in local jurisdiction.
"So what we can do more of now is to introduce more transparency, list out who owns which pieces of land, list out the number of hotspots which are occurring, in real time, in those pieces of land and then, after that, this involves the consumer groups, non-government organisations, international organisations, who all have a stake in this value chain.
"I think that's the only effective way, because you can pass all the laws you like in the respective governments, but if you can't enforce your law and you can't ensure that people comply with regulations and rules...this problem will keep recurring."
-CNA/ir
Collaborations to be expanded
Singapore, Malaysia to help build up fire detection, suppression capabilities in fire-prone Indonesian provinces
Woo Sian Boon Today Online 16 Oct 12;
SINGAPORE - In light of a spike in the number of hotspots this year, Singapore and Malaysia will expand their joint collaborations with the Indonesian provinces of Jambi and Riau to build up capabilities of fire detection and suppression.
Member states of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) are also exploring the use of satellite imagery to identify companies whose land experiences "excessive hotspot activities", said Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan in Parliament yesterday.
While the Indonesian government has allocated funds to fire-prone provinces and initiated pilot projects to prevent land and forest fires, resulting in a steady reduction in the number of hotspots since 2006, the number of hotspots this year has exceeded the cumulative annual total witnessed six years ago - the last time Singapore experienced a prolonged haze spell.
Said Dr Balakrishnan: "Progress in the region's fight against this continued, chronic problem requires strong commitment from all ASEAN countries, effective enforcement of laws on the ground, close and cooperative partnerships among the countries and the support and pressure that non-governmental organisations can come to bear on the stakeholders."
Member of Parliament Lee Bee Wah (Nee Soon GRC), who wanted to know the progress made in haze reduction over the past five years, among other questions, pressed Dr Balakrishnan further on whether more measures could be implemented to reduce the number of hotspots.
Dr Balakrishnan felt the heart of the problem was economics, as it is cheaper for companies to use fire to clear their land.
"And until and unless economic pressure is felt by these companies who are operating this, they will not change their behaviour," he added.
This led Non-Constituency MP Yee Jenn Jong to ask if any of the identified companies were local and whether they could be prosecuted. This, however, posed challenges as a variety of complex business models operate in the hotspot areas, said Dr Balakrishnan.
Further, the culprit must also be caught in the act of burning the land and they would have to be dealt with under Indonesian laws, he noted.
Citing the successful example of enforcing commercial sanctions on the timber industry to encourage sustainable logging, Dr Balakrishnan suggested similar pressure could be exerted on the companies. "We will have to explore using this approach to apply relevant ... commercial pressure on these companies to clean up their act," he said, as he further suggested highlighting positive examples of companies with sustainable practices to encourage others to do the same.
