Indonesian Fires Blamed on Plantation Firms
8/10/99
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Title: Indonesian Fires Blamed on Plantation Firms
Source: Reuters Limited
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 10, 1999
Byline: Chris McCall
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian plantation firms using fire to clear
land illegally are largely to blame for the smog plaguing Southeast
Asia, an Indonesian forestry expert said on Tuesday.
Using dry weather to burn off the land, plantation firms arebehind
about 80 percent of the fires burning in Sumatra and Indonesian
Borneo, development in the news said Bambang Hero Saharjo of the
highly regarded Bogor Agricultural University.
Bushfires have flared every dry season for years. In 1997 and 1998
they were only brought under control by heavy rain.
Companies can lose their concessions and be fined billions of rupiah
(hundreds of thousands of dollars) for setting fires. But few have
ever been convicted.
``I am afraid that like last year they will come to the court and be
released,'' Saharjo told Reuters in an interview. ``The law
enforcement is weak.''
Smoke from the fires have blanketed large parts of Indonesia and
neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia, alarming environmental groups
and raising fears of a repeat of the huge fires of 1997.
After 1997, the Forestry and Plantations Ministry said 176 firms were
identified as using fire to burn off their concessions. None has been
successfully prosecuted.
By using outsiders to set the fires and claiming the blaze spread
from elsewhere, firms were able to justify writing the land off as no
longer viable as forest, Saharjo said.
Fires in underground peat seams, some of which may have been burning
since 1997, are also sometimes blamed.
But evidence on the ground suggests most of these arguments are
spurious, he said.
Experts say this year's fires are following a pattern similar to
1997, when fires in Sumatra and Borneo left much of Southeast Asia
shrouded in smoke pollution for months.
Weather experts expect unusually dry weather up to the end of the dry
season in October, suggesting the worst may yet come.
Light rain may only cause more problems. If it falls on hot ash, it
could create a pall of smoke which would increase the risk of
bronchitis, pneumonia and other illnesses.
Much of the effort over the past two yyears to prevent resurgence of
the fires has proved fruitless, Saharjo said.
Although 16,000 fire fighters have been trained in forest fire
techniques, most of them have gone back to office jobs.
A lot of specialist equipment brought in to fight the fires has
already broken down because of misuse or is stored far from the
fires.
``They cannot blame El Nino this time,'' said Saharjo, referring to a
weather pattern widely blamed in 1997.
But El Nino, associated in the region with very dry conditions, is
due to return next year.
``This time is the best time for Indonesia to fight these fires,'' he
said. ``Law enforcement must go on, even if just a few hectares of
land are destroyed.''