Indonesia considers declaring haze problem national disaster

Indonesia's haze task force is set to discuss Wednesday if the haze problem caused by forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan should be declared a national disaster, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said.
Saifulbahri Ismail Channel NewsAsia 30 Sep 15;

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s task force on the haze affecting parts of Southeast Asia will discuss on Wednesday (Sep 30) whether it is necessary to raise the problem of the forest fires and haze to the level of a national disaster.

The decision to declare the haze a national disaster has to be made by the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB).

However, according to Environment and Forestry Minister and head of the task force Siti Nurbaya Bakar, it is more important to tackle the problem operationally and put out the fires quickly.

"We will have this discussion today but for me, it's more important about the operation instead of the terminology," she explained.

"What is the difference? The point is that we have to do the best thing for the people, also for our neighbours. I'm also following everyday and every hour what is happening with the air pollution in Singapore."

Dr Siti said the forest fires and haze problem should not affect bilateral relations, especially with Singapore and Malaysia, both hit by the heavy smoke from the burning forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

The two countries have also offered to help Indonesia extinguish the fires, a collective bid to stop the haze which has lowered air quality in both countries to unhealthy and sometimes hazardous levels.

As the haze continues to affect the health of thousands of Indonesians, lawmakers and environmental groups have urged the government to move the status of this crisis to a national disaster level.

They believe that once the problem is categorised as such, more resources, including money and manpower, can be mobilised.

“If it becomes a national emergency status, the government will be responsible to fulfill the rights of the people and provide for minimum standards," said Mukriz Friatna from Friends of the Earth Indonesia.

"Secondly, to channel its resources to put out the fire. There will not be any more stories that we don’t have enough funds.”

However, according to Dr siti, there are already funds to deal with the problem.

The last time Indonesia declared a state of national emergency was during the 2004 Asian tsunami, which killed more than 200,000 in the country.

- CNA/pp

Central Banker Families Flee Borneo Town as Haze Turns Hazardous
Yudith Ho, Herdaru Purnomo Bloomberg 1 Oct 15;

Indonesia’s central bank has evacuated the families of its staff in a regional capital on Borneo, as haze from Indonesian forest fires reaches hazardous levels on the island.

Bank Indonesia paid for the families in Pontianak, in West Kalimantan province, to move to the coast further north, where sea breezes and air conditioning reduced the effect of the smoky air, said Dwi Suslamanto, the head of Bank Indonesia in West Kalimantan. Suslamanto has been calling Bank Indonesia headquarters in Jakarta to stock up on supplies such as clean drinking water.

“We can’t rely on human effort to manage this disaster,” Suslamanto said. “Our only hope is for the rain, and for the people who started the fires to not repeat what they did.”

Pollution from the burning of Indonesian forests has been worst felt in Borneo and Sumatra, shutting schools and leading to increased respiratory illnesses, while winds have worsened the haze in Singapore and Malaysia. The government of Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo is investigating more than 100 companies with fires on their land, yet has made little progress in stopping the haze so far.

A gauge of tiny air-pollution particles reached 989 in Palangkaraya in Kalimantan, and 950 in Palembang on Sumatra, almost three times the 350 level considered hazardous, the country’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said on its website. In Singapore, a three-hour pollution index was at a “very unhealthy” level on Wednesday.

Baby Shelter

Pekanbaru, on Sumatra across the Malacca Strait from Singapore, is providing a shelter for hundreds of babies from poor families to help protect them. Indonesia’s central bank has also urged families and children of its workers in Palembang in Sumatra to evacuate to the southern tip of the island, where the air quality is better.

“The situation is no longer worth it for working or going to school,” said Andhika Ullya Tovano, in Jambi, Sumatra. “Children are dismissed from school, but it’s useless as they’re still playing outside because there’s no special warning from the government despite the hazardous status.”


Indonesia: Govt urged to be more serious about protecting peatlands
thejakartapost.com 30 Sep 15;

World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia, an international NGO concerned with conservation, research and environmental conservation, called on the government to be more serious about protecting peatlands by reviewing its developmental policies in those key areas.

“Preventive measures need to be taken continuously to reduce the potential of land and forest fires in the future,” WWF Indonesia’s manager program for Central Kalimantan, Rosenda Chandra Kasih, said as quoted by Antara in Jakarta on Wednesday.

Rosenda said wildfires affecting Central Kalimantan and several other provinces in Kalimantan and Sumatra every year were due to the government’s lack of preparedness to anticipate the droughts.

She said the development of dams needed to be conducted as early as possible to maintain the stability of land humidity and water from inside peatlands throughout the year. It would be less likely for fires to happen in peatlands if there was more water there.

“This effort must be accompanied with peat forest restoration activities to recover its aquatic system,” said Rosendra.

WWF Indonesia’s conservation director Arnold Sitompul said the government needed to carry out an integrated approach together with regional administrations and local communities to prevent land and forest fires.

“[The government] needs to prepare regional administrations and local people by establishing community groups concerned with fires,” he said.

Arnold said most hot spots were in peatlands and that so far the goverment’s prevention and control efforts had not yet been effective.

As of Wednesday, thick smoke has been blanketing Kalimantan. In the past week, the air quality in Palangkaraya and Pontianak has repeatedly dropped to a level deemed dangerous to human health.

The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said on its official website that Palangkaraya’s particulate concentration data still stood at a level deemed dangerous for health (463 µg/m3).

Land and forest fires have continued to occur in Kalimantan despite President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo’s visit to directly monitor fire extinguishing efforts in Central and South Kalimantan. Schools have given their students a vacation for two weeks. The Central Kalimantan health department has recorded that at least 15,000 people suffered from acute respiratory infections due to smoke in September. (ebf)(++++)

Indonesia ‘must step up measures to tackle haze’
NEO CHAI CHIN Today Online 1 Oct 15;

SINGAPORE — Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in Indonesia yesterday (Sept 30) called for more long-term solutions to tackle the haze and for concrete action to be taken during the three years that Indonesian President Joko Widodo had said was needed for “physical work” to be completed.

In an exclusive interview with BBC News, Mr Widodo said Indonesia needs time to build temporary water reserves in forests and to dig canals for water to flow to the peat forests.

“I think we need three years for all the physical work to be completed and for you to see the result — but, I believe that there will be progress every year, too, because there is consistency in our approach,” he said.

He told BBC that Indonesia has deployed 3,700 military officers, 7,900 police officers, 18 helicopters and four planes for water bombing as part of its efforts to contain the haze, which has affected the region in recent weeks.

NGOs Greenpeace and WWF Indonesia said Mr Widodo’s efforts must include the building of dams to block canals in peatlands, to re-wet areas that have been drained.

The building of canals is a common practice for companies growing oil palm trees and trees for pulpwood on peatlands, but drainage of the wetlands — rich carbon stores made up of 90 per cent water and 10 per cent vegetation remains — causes them to be vulnerable to fires, said Mr Yuyun Indradi, Forest Campaigner at Greenpeace South-east Asia.

Mr Widodo’s comments about digging canals contradict his actions on a trip to Riau last November, where he helped build a number of dams across drainage canals, said Mr Yuyun.

“It’s proven canal damming has been effective in preventing and reducing fire.”

WWF Indonesia’s collaboration with Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry to build 1,700 dams in Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan has led to the reduction of hot spots in the area, said its conservation director Arnold Sitompul.

After the damming of canals to re-wet drained peat, there should be reforestation, said Dr Sitompul.

“We are encouraging the government to enforce moratorium in peatlands, while strict law enforcement must be applied to ensure zero fire and zero burning … in all peatlands already (in) concession (areas),” he said.

Concessions are areas that companies have been allowed to develop.

Mr Yuyun called on Mr Widodo to share more details of his three-year plan so the public may help to monitor, and participate.

He also suggested that the damming of canals be made into a “national movement” extending to Jambi, South Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua.

Casting an eye on Mr Widodo’s broader plans for Indonesia, Mr Yuyun was concerned that more forests could be sacrificed to grow more food and to mine coal for power plants.

The President’s recent announcement that he would deregulate and simplify the process of obtaining business permits to lure investments could also undermine efforts to revoke permits of errant companies behind the haze, Mr Yuyun said.

“On one hand, he (Mr Widodo) wants to revoke, but on the other hand he wants to make it easier to get new permits — that’s also quite contradictory,” he added.

“I appreciate any plan that comes from the government to tackle this problem but, again, the government has to be clear and transparent on the plan and … educate the public.”

Some experts have estimated that fires in Indonesia this year, up until Sept 22, have released greenhouse gases equivalent to about 600 million tonnes.

The estimate by the Global Fire Emissions Database, which produces regional and global estimates of fire emissions based on data from 1997 to the present, was published by NASA’s Earth Observatory together with satellite images that were acquired last Thursday.

NASA’s Earth Observatory quoted Columbia University scientist Robert Field as saying 2015 could rank among the most severe burning events on record for Indonesia.


Aerial firefighting strengthens efforts in S. Sumatra
thejakartapost.com 30 Sep 15;

The South Sumatra chapter of the Land and Forest Fire Control Task Force is increasing its air operations to extinguish fires in areas that have been difficult to reach via land routes.

“The aerial firefighting operation to tackle haze [from wildfires], which is still quite thick, has been strengthened as the central government has provided several more helicopters and aircraft for the operation,” said the task force’s deputy chief Yulizar Dinoto as quoted by Antara news agency in Palembang on Wednesday.

He said the task force had just received three helicopters from the central government for water-bombing operations in forest and peat land areas across the province. With the additional three helicopters, plus a new Fixwing X-Track aircraft, Yulizar said the task force now had five helicopters and several aircraft.

He further explained that amid hot weather and very low rainfall, land and forest fires had continued to spread and were quite difficult to tackle with limited personnel and equipment.

Yulizar said apart from aerial firefighting efforts, including the use of weather modification technology, ground efforts in areas where many hot spots had existed, such as Ogan Komering Ilir and Musi Banyuasin regencies, had continued to be intensified.

He said that with those combined efforts, it was hoped that the fires in South Sumatra and several neighboring provinces, such as Jambi and Riau, could be controlled, and haze problems resolved quickly. (ebf)(++++)

Jokowi calls on agency to quickly resolve forest fires
thejakartapost.com 30 Sep 15;

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has called on the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) to quicken the process of extinguishing forest and land fires.

"The President has instructed us to quickly extinguish the forest and land fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan," said head of BNPB Sutopo Purwo Nugroho after a meeting with Jokowi at the State Palace on Wednesday as quoted by tempo.co.

According to Sutopo, the agency has deployed more personnel in significant hot spots such as Jambi, Ogan Komering Ilir and Musi Banyuasin in South Sumatra, and Pulau Pisau, Kapuas and Kotawaringin Timur in Central Kalimantan.

"We will add more personnel and air power as well as focus on tackling forest fires in significant hot spots in South Sumatra as as well as Central Kalimantan," said Sutopo. (kes)(++++)