Greenpeace working to link hot spots to firms

Aaron Low Straits Times 21 Jun 13;

GREENPEACE International is mapping hot spots and matching them to companies whose plantations have contributed to the fires, the group said yesterday.

So far, it has identified more than 1,100 hot spots on islands in the Riau archipelago, the biggest source of the haze, said Mr Kiki Taufik, Greenpeace Indonesia's forest campaign manager.

About half of the hot spots were in areas that were supposed to have been protected by Indonesia's forest moratorium, put in place in 2010 to stop further deforestation, he said.

"About 600 of the hot spots were in the areas protected by the moratorium, while another 577 were outside of them," he told The Straits Times yesterday.

The group is working to map the hot spots and link them to the companies given concessions to build oil palm plantations. "But it is hard because the official concessions map does not seem to be complete, so we will need some time to analyse the data," he said.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a press conference yesterday that the Government will take action against any Singapore firms found to have been responsible for the fires. He said the Government is studying what action it can take under the law.

Meanwhile, agricultural companies continued to state they did not have anything to do with the fires. One firm, Cargill, sent The Straits Times a map pinpointing its plantations as well as the hot spots identified by the National Environment Agency.

Cargill's map showed that its plantations, PT Hindoli and PT Harapan Sawit Lestari, which are part of a joint venture between Cargill and Temasek Holdings, were not in the hot spots.

Other Singapore-listed palm oil firms also said there were no fires on their plantations.

First Resources said that it had not seen fires on its plantations, while Wilmar said it was "not developing any new plantation in Sumatra, and therefore not contributing to the haze".

Hotspots show weaknesses of Indonesia`s forest moratorium: Greenpeace
Antara 20 Jun 13;

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Greenpeace said Thursday half of the hotspots detected on June 11-18, whose smoke travelled to Singapore and Malaysia were in areas that should have been protected by Indonesia`s forest conversion moratorium.

"The fact that fires continue to affect the regions shows how weak is the forest protection enforcement schemes in Indonesia," said Yuyun Indradi, Greenpeace Indonesia forest campaigner said in a release received here Thursday

Indradi also said that companies should also be responsible for ensuring their supply chain, commit to zero deforestation and stop unlawful practices such as clearing land by burning forests and damaging the country`s air.

According to Greenpeace`s analysis of the current revision of the moratorium, map also found that there are more than 10 million hectares of primary forest and about 32 million hectares of secondary forests in Indonesia are not protected by law.

In each revision, the number of forests legally protected under the moratorium continues to decrease - more than six million hectares, has been reduced since 2011.

"President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono recently told Greenpeace the government will work harder to strengthen environmental protection and prevent reduction of the protected forest, This is a weakening signal and should be strengthened," said Indradi.

More than 600,000 hectares of peat lands, primary forests and secondary forests-rich carbon content which if destroyed will contribute greatly to Indonesia`s greenhouse gas emissions, have been removed from the latest moratorium map.

The lack of current data and transparency create confusion about where the actual protected forest moratorium. Based on best available data, forest moratorium is overlapping with 5.5 million hectares of forest whose licenses have been given to serve as timber and oil palm plantations, selective logging or mining.

The Government should review the concessions that have been granted, increase transparency in terms of licensing, create a low carbon land database as a credible alternative to the high-carbon land destruction and make a clear plan of land use.(*)

Editor: Heru