Indonesia: WALHI plans to sue government over forest fires

Jakarta Post, 8 Oct 13;

The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI), a conservation group, has said that it will file a lawsuit against the government for failing to control the annual forest fires in Sumatra.

WALHI said that it would file the case at the Central Jakarta District Court through its ‘Pulihkan Indonesia’ (Restore Indonesia) advocacy team.

Wahyu Wagiman, the team’s spokesman, said that they would attempt to make the case that the government – namely President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, related ministers, and Sumatra regional officials – had consistently failed to enact a policy to prevent forest fires, especially in Riau and Jambi.

“They’ve failed to prevent forest fires, they’ve failed to reduce the number of forest fires and they’ve failed to react quickly enough to tackle forest fires,” Wahyu said on Monday.

“They’ve also failed to enforce the law, especially against big corporations, and not just small farmers,” he added.

Wahyu said that the group also demanded that the police make better progress in determining the cause of the fires and who the perpetrators were.

WALHI said that it had gathered data since June that they used to back up their claim that the President’s administration lacked the conviction to deal with the forest-fire issue.

Data collected includes information from injured parties as well as an academic paper on ‘estimating material and other losses from environmental destruction.’

Sumatra saw 9,236 fire hotspots in June alone, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (NASA FIRMS), with 89 percent located in Riau province.