World's Oldest Rainforests Burn as Indonesia Spreads Haze

Neil Chatterjee Bloomberg News 2 Oct 15;

Having promised to extinguish forest fires in Riau in western Indonesia by early October, President Joko Widodo jetted into Sumatra island last week for a progress check. The smoke was so thick his plane couldn’t land, forcing him back to the capital.

Exacerbated by dry conditions from El Nino, the haze has blown across Southeast Asia, blanketing Singapore, parts of Indonesia and Malaysia in a smog that has closed schools and forced some people to flee their homes. In what has become an annual “haze season” ritual, governments are bickering about who is to blame and how to fix things, fearing a hit to tourism and economic activity.

So far Widodo, known as Jokowi, is following a similar track to his predecessors: Threaten to punish the palm oil and other plantation companies whose land is ablaze and send soldiers in to help fight the fires. But unless he addresses the broader factors behind the burning off, the chances are the haze will keep coming back.

Jokowi’s maneuverability is limited by a decentralized system of government put in place in 2001 in the world’s largest archipelago that has coalesced power around local officials and potentially made it harder to tackle corruption on the ground. There’s also been little effort over the years to address a complex system of overlapping land permits where forest is illegally burned to claim ownership and increase the value to sell for plantations.

“There is no strong control, no strong standards on making decisions at the local level,” said Bustar Maitar, head of Indonesia forests for campaign group Greenpeace. “Jokowi should create strong standards to follow.”

Hazardous Pollution

Fire hotspots have been burning all year in the tropical forests of Sumatra and Borneo, but the government only acted after complaints by neighbor Singapore and as haze in the area surged. The worst of it has been in Indonesia itself: A pollution index at Palangkaraya in central Kalimantan province reached 1,990 last week, more than five times the level considered “hazardous,” and around 125,000 people in the country are suffering haze-linked health issues.

“The government seems to be working slow in handling this, we have lived three years like this with smoke,” said Helda Satriani, a resident of Rumbai in Riau who is nine months pregnant with her first child. “Government, please, take immediate action!”

Political Roadblocks

Jokowi took office a year ago promising to address structural bottlenecks in Southeast Asia’s largest economy, from building infrastructure to making bureaucracy more efficient. He came to power with high expectations given his success in tackling red tape as Jakarta governor. Since then, he’s run into roadblocks from vested interests and even his own party, causing unease among investors and helping make the rupiah Asia’s second-worst performing currency this year.

After his September pledge, Jokowi has scaled back expectations, saying in a BBC interview this week it could take three years to see results.

Southeast Asia has some of the oldest continuous rainforest in the world, part of a swathe that once ran from Malaysia to Northern Australia. Much of Sumatra has a thick canopy of trees covering waterlogged peat soil, an early form of coal, which is drained when logged, leaving a vast area of tinder that can explode and smolder for extended periods. The fires may be extinguished by November, the country’s disaster agency said on Thursday.

Discouraging Landowners

Still, “it’s ridiculous for Widodo to say this will take three years,” said Keith Loveard, head of political risk at Jakarta-based security company Concord Consulting. “What is required is the application of the law in a manner that discourages landowners, small and large, from continuing this practice, in other words tough penalties handed down without exception.”

The government devolved power to the regions to prevent the archipelago from breaking apart after the end of dictator Suharto’s three-decade rule and the Asian financial crisis in 1998. Dubbed the Big Bang decentralization, Indonesia almost doubled the share of government spending to regions and transferred almost two thirds of the central government workforce, according to a 2003 World Bank report.

Re-centralizing land permits may not be possible as the country is too big, but establishing a master map with clearer ownership would be a step forward, said Kevin O’Rourke, who wrote “Reformasi: The Struggle for Power in Post-Soeharto Indonesia.”

Single Map

Jokowi told Bloomberg in February he wanted to create a single map for all provinces to prevent overlapping concessions, though there’s been no detail since.

“If we can have one map by 2020, that will be very helpful,” said Aida Greenbury, the manager for sustainability at Singapore-based Asia Pulp & Paper Co., one of whose suppliers PT Bumi Mekar Hijau has been named a suspect for causing fires. There are 500 licenses held by other companies across the land in its supply chain, and while burning has no value for APP it triples the price others can sell land for, she said.

In a country with traditional slash-and-burn agricultural practices, local communities are allowed to burn up to 2 hectares of land per family. Prevention of illegal larger scale burning has been limited, with the government freezing permits for four companies so far.

Still, pruning the “thicket of licenses” created over decades will take time, Trade Minister Tom Lembong said in an interview on Wednesday.

“The government is like a super tanker, you are trying to turn around the policy regime, but it’s like turning around a super tanker.”


New strategy sought to fight 'slash and burn' problem
The Star 1 Oct 15;

KUALA LUMPUR: As a blanket of haze, caused by thick smoke from forest fires in Indonesia, covers parts of South-East Asia, the region is struggling to find an effective response to the problem, experts said.

The haze has caused health problems, flight delays and school closures across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in what has become an annual ordeal that has defied attempts by governments, businesses and green groups to tackle it.

At the heart of the problem are palm oil plantation owners, who use cheap and easy slash-and-burn techniques to clear forests and meet rising global demand for the oil used for cooking and in household products from shampoo to ice cream.

Experts stress that Indonesia, home to the world's third-largest tropical forest acreage, holds the key to the problem and needs to put into practice a long-term plan to enforce laws, tackle the fires and spend more on prevention.

Margareth Sembiring, senior analyst at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said the complexity of the issue means it is difficult to make the region haze-free. "Strengthening law enforcement in Indonesia is undoubtedly key in solving the problem," she said.

Other experts say companies and consumers must also play a part by pushing for palm oil to be produced more sustainably.

Environmental groups like Greenpeace have targeted companies in high-profile campaigns, and some firms have made commitments to help stop deforestation by palm oil plantation owners.

Golden Agri-Resources, the world's second-largest listed palm planter by acreage, said last week it had stopped buying from a supplier punished by Indonesia for allegedly causing forest fires.

Indonesia, the world's fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, mainly from deforestation, will be one of the countries under scrutiny at December's United Nations climate change conference, which will try to get legally binding commitments from the 120 member nations to cut CO2 emissions.

Under criticism from its neighbours, the government has investigated more than 200 companies and ordered four to suspend operations for allegedly causing forest fires as it scrambles to control blazes on Sumatra and Kalimantan islands.

Weak law enforcement in Indonesia is exacerbated by a lack of transparency about land ownership, making it harder to pinpoint and punish perpetrators, experts said.

"Without a centralised, public map that shows resource ownership, it will remain hard to find the offending companies or landowners," said Andika Putraditama, Indonesia research analyst at the World Resources Institute (WRI).

Indonesia last December launched its long-awaited "One Map" initiative, a comprehensive map of land ownership to provide clarity on the boundaries of land owned by companies, communities and the government.

It is due to be completed in two to three years, but progress has been hampered by overlapping land use permits and other technical issues, experts said.

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said her ministry had given all data about the permits it had issued to the Economy Ministry, which is coordinating the project. "Basically, we want early prevention (of the fires), if possible starting now," she said in response to questions put by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

She declined to comment on questions about the budget for fire prevention and efforts to make land allocation more transparent.

Indonesia in 2014 became the last country to ratify the Association of South-East Asian Nations' (Asean) transboundary agreement to tackle haze, some 12 years after it was launched.

The accord calls for concerted regional efforts to prevent or put out the fires, but every year, June-September monsoon winds send thick smoke from Indonesia to Malaysia and Singapore.

"It is important to understand that Asean stands on a sovereignty principle," said Sembiring. "The onus is on all member states to develop their own national policies and programmes based on the agreement and implement them accordingly."

The haze has also led to calls for a boycott of products containing palm oil, but green groups say a more effective approach would be to boost sustainable production.

The rapid growth of palm oil plantations, now covering over 11 million hectares in Indonesia - an area bigger than Iceland - has been a leading cause of fires and deforestation.

Demand for sustainable palm oil is rising, and around a fifth of the world's palm oil is now certified as such by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a body of consumers, green groups, plantation firms and consumer goods companies.

RSPO standards require its members to stop cutting virgin forest, produce or source oil only from land to which growers have clear rights, and not to clear land by burning.

Through satellite data and online maps the RSPO has tracked the origins of the current haze.

The data showed no fire alerts at RSPO-certified palm oil concessions between January and August, compared with 627 at those without certification. – Reuters/The Straits Times/Asia News Network


Indonesia hopes for rain to douse forest fires causing smog in Southeast Asia
Reuters 1 Oct 15;

Indonesia is hoping for rain to help extinguish forest fires that have been smoldering for weeks, shrouding parts of Southeast Asia in thick smog, a government official said on Thursday.

For years, the region has suffered annual bouts of smog, caused by slash-and-burn farming in Indonesia's northern islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan, but governments' efforts to tackle the problem have failed.

A lengthy dry season in Indonesia this year has been worsened by the El Nino weather effect, making it harder to contain the fires in the absence of rains that usually arrive in November.

Indonesia has already spent millions and deployed thousands of firefighters and several water-bombing planes in its efforts to put out the fires, the official, Willem Rampangilei, told reporters.

"The fires can only be put out by rain and water-bombing, so it needs time," said Rampangilei, the head of Indonesia's national disaster management agency.

"We are hoping by the end of October or early November, the haze problem will be resolved."

The agency had previously hoped to put out the fires, which are often blamed on smallholders or plantation companies, by mid-October.

Growing pollution from the smog has disrupted flights and forced school closures in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, while thousands of people on the two Indonesian islands are reported to be battling respiratory diseases.

Indonesia has faced criticism from neighbors and green groups for not doing enough to prevent the fires, which cause millions of dollars worth of damage to health and the environment every year.

It has repeatedly turned down assistance from Singapore, which has offered water-bombing equipment and personnel to help put out the fires.

Indonesian officials, including Vice President Jusuf Kalla, have repeatedly said they have enough resources to handle the crisis, with Kalla adding that neighboring countries should be grateful for clean air provided by Indonesia's rainforests outside the haze season.

Rampangilei said Indonesia had the crisis under control.

"We are very grateful but everything is under control and there is progress," he said, when asked why the government would not accept foreign assistance.

The environment ministry says it is taking legal action against four companies and is investigating about 200 more.

Singapore, where commuters have taken to wearing protective face masks, has urged Asia Pulp & Paper Co Ltd to check if subsidiaries and suppliers have links to the forest fires. The firm has said it will cooperate.

(Reporting by Bernadette Christina and Cindy Silviana; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)


Annual haze crisis to stay despite Indonesia's efforts
Francis Chan, Straits Times AsiaOne 2 Oct 15;

The annual haze crisis is here to stay despite one of Indonesia's best efforts in recent years to counter the illegal forest fires that cause it.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo told the BBC in a report out yesterday that he needs time to tackle the issue, which has affected the lives of millions across his country, as well as Singapore and Malaysia.

The illegal fires on peatlands, including concession areas marked for cultivation by plantation companies, are "not a problem that you can solve quickly", said Mr Joko.

"You will see results soon, and in three years, we will have solved this."

Some 3,700 soldiers and nearly 8,000 policemen have been deployed to fight forest fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra islands.

The national police have arrested many suspects and commenced probes against several plantation firms in connection with the use of outlawed slash-and-burn techniques to clear plantation land.

Mr Joko has also ordered canals with dams in fire-prone areas to be built to prevent peatlands from draining out during the dry season and becoming tinder for fires.

While observers agree that these are by far the most wide-ranging efforts by any Indonesian government in dealing with the crisis, which has sent air pollution to at times hazardous levels, most remain sceptical over Mr Joko's timeline.

Professor Asit K. Biswas from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy said the issues surrounding the haze crisis are so complex that it cannot be resolved in three years.

A key factor is that Indonesia does not have the data or expertise "to fully appreciate even the extent and magnitude of the problem", said the expert on resource and development-related issues.

"This includes who are the people responsible for it, why is it happening and what are the solutions that need to be implemented and who will implement them," he added.

The effects of climate change on regional weather patterns are also not on the side of Indonesia.

Some climate experts have warned that the extreme dry weather from the El Nino phenomenon will continue to cause peatlands to burn more readily this year.

El Nino - which started in March this year - typically lasts nine months but some say indications are that it is set to peak only in November and could possibly last well into the first half of next year.

Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency said last week that data from 2006 to last year shows that hot spots typically appear between June and October. Its spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho had also said earlier that the prevailing dry spell may mean they may continue to burn until next month.

Assistant Professor Winston Chow of the National University of Singapore's geography department is of the view that while climate change will not cause more fires or hot spots, it will create conditions that favour hot spots to form.

"There's a subtle but important difference and hence climate change must be factored into long-term planning for mitigating the haze crisis," he added.

Singapore and Malaysia have offered to help Indonesia fight the forest fires. Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen, who was at high-level talks with his Indonesian counterpart on Monday, said he was reassured that Mr Joko has personally taken note of the issues related to the haze crisis.

"I wish him every good outcome as they approach this in a more determined way to prevent the fires," said Dr Ng. "And I am glad that their primary motivation is for the health of their own citizens."