ASEAN to disclose names of companies caught for open burning
Copyright 2000 Kyodo News Service Japan Economic Newswire
October 7, 2000, Saturday
Environment ministers of Southeast Asian countries decided Saturday to disclose the names of plantation owners caught open burning, which is blamed for constant haze in parts of the region.
Indonesian Environment Minister Alexander Sonny Keraf said ASEAN ministers decided on the measure because environmental laws in his country, where nearly all the burning takes place, lack the teeth to punish culprits.
The decision came at the end of the two-day meeting of the environment ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the capital of Malaysia's Sabah state on Borneo Island.
Satellite photographs will be used to find the culprits, Keraf said.
'We will announce the name of the owners (and) of their countries. We hope there would be no repeat of what happened in 1997,' he said, calling the measure a 'moral sanction.'
In that year, thick acrid smoke coming from forest fires in Indonesia's Sumatra and Kalimantan provinces blanketed Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and even parts of Thailand and the Philippines.
The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that the problem cost the region more than $9 billion in treatment costs, lost tourist revenue and disruptions of air and sea transport.
At that time, the world climate was experiencing dry conditions caused by the El Nino effect. In Southeast Asia, slash-and-burn methods used by plantation companies to clear land exacerbated the haze problem.
In a joint press statement, the ASEAN ministers expressed their concerns that 'it would take only a short spell for a large number of fires to break out and the smoke haze to return to the region.'
Meteorologists in the region predict a 30% chance of the El Nino effect returning next year.
'The ministers urged Indonesia to take effective enforcement measures to tackle plantation and forest fires in order to prevent a repeat of the 1997 regional haze episode,' the statement said.
Malaysian Science, Technology and Environment Minister Law Hieng Ding told Kyodo News that ASEAN ministers have been demanding that Indonesia to amend its largely toothless environmental laws.
Keraf had said his ministry has no enforcement authority and is therefore in no position to penalize those responsible for the haze.
'The haze is indeed a responsibility of Indonesia but it doesn't mean we have to (tackle forest fires) all by ourselves.'
Keraf said his government has dispatched 20 personnel to Malaysia to learn about that country's environmental laws.
In another move, the ministers came up with the 'Kota Kinabalu Resolution on Environment' to deal with the increasing number of forest fires caused by global warming, among other measures.
The resolution also proposes the setting up of an international forum on fire hazards arising from large-scale burning of forests and the establishment of an Emergency Response and Rescue Institute.
The institute would perform not only monitoring but also research, training and rescue operations.
The next environmental ministerial meeting will be held in Myanmar in 2003.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.