Planetary Disaster: Indonesian Fires Illustrate Costs of Forest Ecosystem Collapse

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

10/13/97

OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE

For the past two decades the rainforests of Southeast Asia, including

Indonesia and Malaysia, have been subjected to an unprecedented

industrial rainforest harvest. Tremendous fortunes, political clout

and short-term economic advancement have been achieved through a

virtual mining of rainforest ecosystems in Indonesia, Malaysia,

Philippines, Thailand and elsewhere. The long-term ecological results

of clearly unsustainable forest management practices are being

realized as much of Southeast Asia is blanketed in life-threatening

cloud of haze as the remaining fragmented and diminished rainforests

are ablaze.

Indonesia's forests are going up in smoke. President Suharto has

called the fires "a natural disaster," but an economic policy based on

the over-exploitation of the archipelago's natural resources and the

corruption entrenched in Indonesia's forestry industry have fuelled

the blaze. Blame also lies with international investors keen to get

their noses in the trough of the tiger economies of the Pacific rim.

The role of timber estates, big plantation companies and

transmigration contractors in the fire shatters the myth that

Indonesia's forest peoples are the main agents of destruction in the

sad story of the overexploitation of Indonesia's forests.

It is critical for humanities future survival that the rainforest

management mistakes made in Southeast Asia are not repeated elsewhere.

The scale of operation and intensity of harvest practiced

indiscriminately and with severe ecological consequences in Southeast

Asia must not be repeated in the last great forest expanses and

critical global ecosystems of Brazil, Africa, Russia, Papua New

Guinea, Canada and elsewhere. And finally, the last remaining tracts

of Southeast Asian rainforests must be either preserved or managed

with low-impact, certified harvesting techniques to maintain a matrix

of intact and carefully managed natural forest cover. Forest

restoration of both natural forests and production plantations will

play a critical role in repairing damaged ecological systems. Failure

to pursue a policy of strict preservation, certified forestry and

forest restoration will lead to continued severe ecological

degradation and resultant human suffering for year to come.

Glen Barry

LIST NOTE: I would have preferred to be tracking this story weekly, as

would have been the case if I had not been overseas. However, given

the backlog and the importance of this major rainforest news event,

here are 8 significant reports over the past couple weeks concerning

this continuing human tragedy. Each provides a slightly different

take on the situation.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

ITEM #1

Title: Indonesia Fires Hit National Parks--Pressure Group

Source: Reuters

Status: (c) Reuters Limited 1997

Date: 10/9/97

Byline: Gerrard Raven

LONDON - The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Wednesday forest

and brush fires sweeping Indonesia had now reached at least 17 of the

country's huge national parks, increasing the threat to wildlife,.

Sounding the alarm at the increasing deforestation of the globe, the

pressure group predicted a fresh crisis in Indonesia when the long-

awaited monsoon rains wash ash into swelling rivers, heightening the

risk of floods.

"It seems that the fires have jumped into primary forests where there

should be no commercial activity and which are therefore most

important for wildlife," Francis Sullivan, director of the Fund's

Forests for Life Campaign, told a London news conference.

The Fund's programme office in Jakarta has been closely monitoring the

fires, caused by the clearing of land for farming or settlements,

which have caused a blanket of pollution which has spread to

neighbouring South-East Asian countries.

Sullivan said national parks in Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi

and Irian Jaya were now ablaze and rare animals, including at least 29

Orang Utans, were known to have perished.

"We are all praying for rain. You just cannot put out fires covering

hundreds of thousands of hectares (acres)," he said.

"But we fear another disaster is waiting to happen downstream when the

ash is washed into the rivers, clogging them and producing a clear

risk of flooding."

The Fund estimated the fires would also add significantly to global

warming as they would cause the equivalent of at least half of

Indonesia's normal annual production of carbon dioxide as well as

other more noxious chemicals.

Sullivan was launching a report by the Fund, backed by Britain's World

Conservation Monitoring Centre, which showed that of the 8,080 million

hectares (20.2 million acres) of forests in the world 8,000 years ago,

62 percent had disappeared.

Only six percent of what remains is protected against development or

logging, the report showed.

The Fund is urging all countries to protect at least 10 percent of

their remaining forests to ensure they remain viable ecosystems,

especially targeting the United States, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia,

which between them have half the world's remaining forests.

"The frightening thing is that the pace of forest destruction has

accelerated rapidly over the last five years and continues to rise,"

Sullivan said.

Garo Batmanian, who heads the group's Brazilian operation, said

Indonesian-style problems were hitting the country where government

monitoring showed that fires to clear forest and pasture were up 25

percent this year.

Health problems had become serious in the city of Manaus in the Amazon

basin, whose one million people were living under a thick blanket of

smog with a radius of 80 kilometres (50 miles).

Smoke had closed some regional airports 20 to 30 times in the past

month, Batmanian said.

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ITEM #2

Title: Indonesia counts the cost of forest fires

Source: Agence France-Presse

Date: 10/6/97

JAKARTA, Oct 6 (AFP) - Forest fires have cut a 96,000 hectare(237,120

acre) scar across Indonesia and cost more than 45 billion rupiah (12.5

million dollars) in other damage, a minister said Monday.

Forestry Minister Jamaluddin Suryohadikusomo said the financial loss

had come from 15,600 hectares (38,532 acres) of plantations being used

to grow profitable commodities such as palm oil and rubber.

The remaining 80,000 hectares were forest areas, including protected

and national forests, Suryohadikusumo said, giving his ministry's

first estimate of damage.

He said companies found guilty of illegal burning would be held

accountable for damage and faced having operating licenses revoked.

The government has already revoked 151 licenses for 29 companies who

were unable to disprove allegations supported by satellite images that

the fires burning on their land had been started deliberately.

Of the 151 permits, 69 were held by four government companies, the

Media Indonesia daily reported.

A company controlled by timber baron Mohammad "Bob" Hasan, a

confidante of President Suharto, was among the companies that had

licenses withdrawn last Friday.

Hasan last week rejected blame for the fires, maintaining that small

farmers and brush fires were mainly responsible for the destruction of

up to 800,000 hectares (1.97 million acres) of forests this year,

according to non-official estimates from satellite images.

Suryohadikusomo said the fires in plantations had begun to subside and

that most of the fires still burning were in beach areas where small

farmers were still burning land.

"But they (the farmers) should not be blamed as they are poor and have

no money," Suryohadikusumo said.

He said the government was training 8,600 personnel with financial

assistance from the United States, Canada and Germany to fight fires

that have cast a pall of choking smoke over much of Indonesia and

neighboring countries.

Air quality has reached alarming poor levels in provinces throughout

the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan while areas in Java were also

reporting a deterioration in air quality Monday.

Sukardi, the deputy chief of the state-run Environmental Impact

Management Agency, said the fires that have ravaged several

mountainous areas on Java had "influenced the air quality in some

cities on the northern coast, particularly Jakarta."

Sukardi said the number of serious fires and the amount of haze coming

from the fires had decreased but added that the problem was not over

yet, Media Indonesia reported.

"Although the number of hot spots have gone down considerably, in some

areas the haze is still thick, like in South Sumatra, Jambi, Bengkulu,

West Sumatra and South Kalimantan," he said.

Bengkulu and Jambi are provinces on Sumatra.

The smog has also disrupted aviation and sea traffic in addition to

causing respiratory complications for more than 40,000 people, six of

whom have died from smoke-related ailments.

A Jambi meteorology office employee told AFP on Monday the haze "is

still very bad today" with daytime visibility of about 10 meters

(yards).

"It was somewhat better on Friday and Saturday, but it has

deteriorated again since Sunday," he said.

He added that most kindergarten and elementary school children, who

were supposed to resume lessons on Monday after being ordered to stay

home since the end of September, were kept at home.

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ITEM #3

Title: The Threatened Planet--South Asia's Year of Reckoning

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Date: 10/6/97

Byline: LOUISE WILLIAMS in Jakarta and MARK BAKER in Kuala Lumpur

THE dream dies hard. The forests which once humbled humankind are now

broken and burning. And as the world awakens to an ecological disaster

in south-east Asia, the naivete of those who trusted in the permanence

of nature - and the conceit and greed of those who challenged it - is

being laid bare.

The early explorers of Borneo found a tropical canopy so dense that

from a distance the tops of the trees looked like smooth fields of

grass. It was said an orangutan could travel from the south to the

north of the vast island without descending from the treetops.

So moist was the forest, soaking up the rains which fell four days out

of five on average, that it lay like a moist band round the equator.

These were the cool, clean lungs of Asia.

Now Asia's lungs, laid open by decades of rampant logging, are ablaze,

and tens of millions of people are choking in vast clouds of smog. And

now it is not just the great trees which are burning - the land itself

is on fire. Tens of thousands of hectares of rainforest peat, the most

important natural element in fighting greenhouse carbon gases, have

been ignited and are facing permanent destruction.

As the vast blanket of smog which has enveloped more than half of

south-east Asia spread further last week - with major new fires

breaking out in peninsular Malaysia and on the Indonesian island

of Lombok, near the tourist beaches of Bali - international

authorities and environment agencies began to sound the alarm

bells of a major catastrophe.

There were dire predictions of multi-billion dollar losses in forest

and agricultural production, in collapsed tourist revenues and

crippled transport services, and the incalculable loss of rainforest

plant and animal species.

More alarming were estimates of a sharply rising toll in human death

and injury, and a long-term jump in disease and illness. And for the

planet itself, a calamitous outcome: the likely speeding of the

process of global warming.

More than 600,000 hectares of forest have already been destroyed, with

thousands of fires continuing to burn out of control. An estimated

200,000 people in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have been forced

to seek hospital treatment for the effects of prolonged exposure to

dangerously high levels of air pollution.

Indonesia has confirmed at least five deaths directly attributed to

the pollution and the choking haze has been blamed for the loss of 28

seamen who disappeared after two ships collided in thick smog in the

Straits of Malacca last Friday. It is also said to have contributed to

the earlier crash of a Garuda airliner in Sumatra, in which all 234

passengers and crew were killed.

As the United Nations called for a co-ordinated international response

and countries including Australia began sending money and expert

assistance, the World Wide Fund for Nature described the crisis as a

planetary disaster.

"The sky in south-east Asia has turned yellow and people are dying,"

said the WWF's director, Mr Claude Martin. "What we are witnessing is

not just an environmental disaster but a tremendous health problem

being imposed on millions of people."

There were warning signs months ago. The first tell-tale "hot spots"

began to appear on the satellite maps prepared by the World

Meteorological Organisation in May. On the satellite images they were

merely tiny red dots. On the ground, they were raging fires, with

columns of thick, black smoke spewing up into the blue skies as they

consumed the trees and the land on which they stood.

AT the time, most Indonesians thought the fires were normal. For at

least two decades fire has routinely been used to clear scrub,

grassland and logged-over forests to make way for plantations of

cash crops: row after row of stubby oil palms, and endless expanses of

the stringy, narrow trunks of rubber trees, where once stood the

magnificent dense canopy of the tropical rainforests.

Every year since the last great drought of 1982-83, tens or hundreds

of thousands of hectares of the most important remaining tracts of

tropical forest in Asia have been lost to fire before the monsoon

rains arrived to put out the flames.

At Bapedal, the Indonesian Government's Agency for Environmental

Impact Control, experts knew the nightmare had already begun. "We

knew about the El Nin~o forecast and the drought that was coming,"

says one official. "So we sent out warnings to all our regional

offices. We asked them to tell the plantations and the farmers not to

burn. But they did."

Within two months, the "hot spot" maps were screaming an alarming

message. In the Riau province of Sumatra, almost 200 fires were

burning. By September, 650 fires were raging in central Kalimantan,

and thousands more nationwide.

Airline flights were in chaos, the sun had disappeared above the new

canopy of smoke, and the Indonesian Government announced that at least

20 million people were facing health risks due to the thick and

poisonous smog.

And still the expected rains did not come.

Along the roads through the fire zones, a terrible vista of

destruction lay shrouded in dense smoke. The fires were raging out of

control. All that was left were blackened stumps and browned, curled

leaves. So vast was the smoke cloud that the source fires were lost

somewhere inside.

Many of the tens of millions of Indonesian villagers whose water

supplies were dwindling in the drought armed themselves with branches

and face-cloths, and tried to stamp the blazes out. The smoke, they

say, left them tired and ill - eyes smarting, throats rasping. The

medical explanation, according to the Association of Indonesian Lung

Doctors, is simple. Gases in the smoke, like carbon dioxide, nitrogen

oxide and sulphur dioxide are absorbed by the blood faster than

oxygen.

On the ground the people are choking, their blood oxygen levels

dwindling as the smoke grows thicker.

By early last month, smoke from the Indonesian fires had spread more

than 2,000 kilometres across equatorial south-east Asia, enveloping

most of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, and stretching north and east

into Thailand and the Philippines.

In Kuala Lumpur, already choking under a pall of its own industrial

and traffic fumes, the smoke from the fires in nearby Sumatra blocked

out the sun for weeks on end and sent pollution index readings to

dangerous new highs. In the east Malaysian State of Sarawak, on

Borneo, the smog generated by fires in neighbouring Indonesian

Kalimantan brought pollution to world record levels and forced the

declaration of a 10-day state of emergency before rains and a wind

shift brought temporary relief last week.

In the Sumatran province of Jambi, where visibility has hovered around

20 metres for a month, 64,000 people have sought medical treatment.

Indonesia has no air pollution monitoring equipment and provides no

information for the public on the dangers of the air they are

breathing.

In the forests of Kalimantan, the extent of the suffering remains

unclear. Many indigenous communities, their culture based on deep

spiritual respect for the forests, face food and water shortages, and

poisonous smoke. They do not live along the main roads, so their

plight is hidden from view.

For years, the Jakarta Government has been dismissing the summer fires

as the irresponsible action of the dwindling forest tribes whose

shifting cultivation methods involve the burn-off of tiny squares of

land for mountain rice cultivation. The extent of the Government's own

complicity in much more extensive fire-clearing was papered over.

WITH the rising international price of palm oil, the Indonesian

Government has actively sought to topple Malaysia as the world's

largest producer of the commodity, which is used to produce soap,

margarine and cooking oil. By 2000, Indonesia wants to double its

area under palm oil cultivation to 5.5 million hectares.

This year, about 300,000 hectares of virgin rainforest was approved

for "conversion" to palm oil plantations. Clear- felling of trees for

wood, followed by burn-offs, are the quickest and cheapest way of

obtaining more land. And under Indonesia's lax reforestation laws,

replanting virgin forests with palm oil or rubber plantations

constitutes compliance.

In the 1960s, 82 per cent of Indonesia's land cover was tropical

forest - some of the most remote and biologically diverse patches

of green on Earth. Now, the forest cover has shrunk to 53per cent,

including plantations. The World Bank estimates 15 million hectares of

virgin forest has been turned into unproductive scrubland and another

20 million hectares of watershed land is in critical condition.

The bank estimates another 800,000 hectares of forest is being lost

each year, suggesting that even replanting with palm oil plantations

is lagging behind the clearance rate. Hundreds of millions of dollars

from the Government's reforestation fund have been diverted to the

development of an Indonesian aircraft and other non-environmental

purposes. It is not surprising that most of Indonesia's big logging

concession-holders and plantation owners boast cosy political ties to

the ruling elite.

The first to break ranks was Indonesia's Environment Minister, Mr

Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, who has tracked the satellite hot spots to

the owners of 176 plantations and forestry concessions. The owners, he

said, treated his officials with contempt, claiming friends with

political connections and immunity from prosecution.

"It's easy for them, sitting in their air-conditioned offices," Mr

Sarwono said, announcing he would hound the companies until they

proved their innocence. Nearly three weeks later, his eyes are

watering with fatigue and emotion. He and his staff have operated 24

hours a day monitoring the blazes.

While suffering neighbours have been quick to point the finger at

Indonesia, some of them are equally culpable. Unchecked and

unsustainable logging over recent decades, often by companies

with connections at the highest political level, has decimated the

native forests of Thailand and the Philippines, and severely depleted

Malaysia's reserves.

Big Malaysian logging companies, which have played a leading role in

the destruction of tropical rainforests in the South Pacific, are

actively involved in logging operations in Indonesia. At least 40

Malaysian companies with local partners are among those holding

permits to clear large areas of Indonesia for new palm oil and rubber-

tree plantations.

At independence 40 years ago, 70 per cent of Malaysia was forested.

Now, the area is less than 40 per cent. More than 14 million cubic

metres of timber a year is being stripped from the precious forests of

Borneo in the Malaysian States of Sarawak and Sabah, much of it by

companies which pay only lip service to sustainable forestry

practices.

Last week - in the midst of the international outcry over forest

clearance and air pollution - the Government of Dr Mahathir Mohamad

agreed to open up another 1.7 million hectares of virgin forest in

Sabah to commercial logging.

Malaysian environmentalists estimate that at least a third of the smog

which has choked Kuala Lumpur for the past two months, and some of its

most toxic elements, is generated by local industry and traffic. Yet

in 1994 the Malaysian Cabinet, ignoring the warnings of its own

experts, threw out a comprehensive "Clean Air Action Plan" to control

industrial air pollution. The cost to Malaysia's treasured economic

growth targets was considered too high.

"This Government has shown it is not serious about taking the steps

needed to protect the environment," said the head of the Malaysian

Centre for Environment, Technology and Development, Mr Gurmit Singh.

"The haze is basically an internal problem. We can't just blame it on

the Indonesians."

Some experts are predicting the smog crisis will get much worse over

the next few months and could last until at least next May. There are

signs the El Nin~o effect is extending the drought and may even

suppress the annual north-east monsoon, stopping the rains which are

the only hope of dousing the massive fires.

If that happens, the fires are expected to spread and new outbreaks

are certain across Indonesia and Malaysia, building even higher levels

of air pollution. But the biggest concern of environmentalists is that

the fires are already moving into large areas of peat forest, the most

fragile of tropical ecosystems. The peat can burn unchecked and unseen

beneath the forest floor for months. Once burnt, it is gone forever.

The peat forests, formed over thousand of years, are the true lungs of

the planet, drawing vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, and

countering global warming. A quarter of south-east Asia's 20 million

hectares of peat forest - most of it in Indonesia and Malaysia - has

already been lost to logging and land clearing, and much of that

remaining has been seriously degraded.

AN authority on peat forests, Mr Faizal Parish, who is executive

director of the independent agency Wetlands International, based

at the University of Malaya, says the damage already caused by the

forest-fires in Indonesia may result in a 5 per cent increase in

global greenhouse gases.

Mr Parish is alarmed by a fire which broke out last week in a peat

forest in the State of Pekan, on the east coast of peninsular

Malaysia, and which has already destroyed 1,000 hectares. "If the

remaining 250,000 hectares of that forest catch fire, and there must

be a real risk of that, it will create as much smoke again as all the

fires now burning in Indonesia," he said.

What is hardest to calculate is the short-term and longer-term effect

of the continued exposure of millions of people to the dangerous

levels of air pollution created by the fires.

Tens of thousands of tonnes of minute particles are being released

into the atmosphere by the smoke. These can penetrate deep into the

lungs and bloodstream, and are known, at much smaller levels of

exposure, to cause respiratory and cardio-vascular disease, heighten

cancer risks and increase birth defects. "How many people will fall

sick and die in later years is the million-dollar question," says the

head of the World Health Organisation in Kuala Lumpur, Dr Hishashi

Ogawa.

As intermittent rain and shifting winds brought temporary relief to

Kuala Lumpur last week, there were signs of renewed complacency. But

the wind-shifts which helped some Malaysians spelt trouble for other

people, turning clouds of smoke back towards Jakarta.

"Every nation will have its day of reckoning," says an official of the

Indonesian Environment Ministry. "We have been warned. Our young

people are breathing this air. They are our future, our human

resources. How sick will they be?"

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ITEM #4

Title: Indonesia Timber King Denies Responsible for Fires

Source: Reuters

Date: 10/3/97

Byline: Raju Gopalakrishnan

JAKARTA (Reuter) - Indonesia's best-known timber magnate said on

Thursday he would recommend jail sentences for anyone in the industry

found responsible for the bush fires that have caused a blinding smog

over large parts of Southeast Asia.

But Mohammad "Bob" Hasan, who heads the Indonesia Forestry Society

(MPI), said that logging companies were not primarily to blame.

A variety of factors, including the long dry season, timber smugglers

destroying evidence, and small farmers and oil palm and rubber

plantations clearing land for cultivation were responsible for the

fires, he told Reuters in an interview.

"It's nonsense," he said of charges that forestry companies, most of

which are members of the MPI, were also at fault. "We have to preserve

our forests. It doesn't make sense."

Asked what he would do if MPI members were found responsible for the

fires, Hasan said: "If they do it on purpose I will ask the government

to revoke their licence or even send them to court.

"If they do it on our purpose, to destroy our natural resources, they

can go to jail."

Forestry experts have said that some companies use fire to clear land

after it has been logged. But Hasan said government rules prohibited

other uses of land under the control of the forestry ministry.

"We have to re-forest it immediately," he said.

Hasan, 67, is a close associate of President Suharto, with whom he

says he plays golf three times a week and accompanies on fishing

expeditions.

Forbes magazine's latest list of the world's wealthiest people has him

in 99th position with an estimated net worth of $3 billion, mostly

from timber interests.

The World Wide Fund for Nature has estimated that 600,000 hectares

(1.5 million acres) of bushlands and forests have been burned or are

ablaze in the country's Sumatra and Kalimantan regions.

The fires have spread a choking smog over Singapore, Malaysia, parts

of the Philippines and Thailand for several weeks, although sporadic

rains in some areas have eased the situation.

Hasan said about 100,000 hectares of the burned or burning land

involved areas under forest concessions, adding that the fires had

spread from neighbouring plots including plantations and small

holdings.

"It's because of the neighbours, the long dry season and the strong

wind," he said. In some areas, timber smugglers were setting fires to

roots of trees they had logged to destroy evidence.

"I think our neighbouring country has to help us also," he said,

referring to Malaysia, the only country with which Indonesia shares a

land border. "When people are smuggling logs, they have to catch them

too. This is one of the causes too."

But the main problem, he said, was in the 30 million hectares of

"conversion forests," set aside by the government to be cleared and

used for cultivation.

"The content of these forests are bush and tall grass," Hasan said.

"But we are cleaning this up. Up to now, of the 30 million hectares,

only about 5-6 million have been transferred to good uses, like agro-

land or plantations. When we finish this, then I don't think that the

fires will occur."

Unfortunately, the cheapest and most popular method used to clear

these forests is fire. Because Indonesia is suffering from drought

induced by the El Nino weather phenomenon, some of these fires were

out of control, Hasan said.

Peat land and coal under the forests had caught fire in some places,

he said. Many of these were deep in the interior of Borneo island,

with no roads or other forms of access.

"As soon as it rains it will be finished," Hasan said. "We just have

to wait."

He also admitted that there were some businessmen who owned forest

concessions as well as cash crop plantations.

Hasan himself is the head of conglomerate Astra International, a group

that mainly manufactures cars but also owns palm oil plantations.

But he dismissed suggestions that the government was loath to penalise

companies suspected of spreading the fires because they were

politically well-connected.

"The bigger companies dare not do it. They have a lot at stake."

Astra, he said, would summarily sack any employee found using fire to

clear land.

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ITEM #5

Title: Indonesian Fires No Accident, Singapore Paper Say

Source: Reuters

Date: 10/2/97

SINGAPORE - Singapore's leading newspaper used a stunning series of

colour photos on Wednesday to make the point that fires causing

choking smog across Southeast Asia are no accident.

The satellite pictures lead to one conclusion: "Indonesia's forest

fires are no accident or act of nature," the daily Straits Times said.

It ran a series of six photos, including two before-and-after shots at

the top of the front page, to show that forests were being cleared to

make way for plantations, with fire employed as the means of getting

rid of the natural vegetation.

They also show the fires continuing into September, by which time the

smog -- affecting Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines as well as

Singapore and Indonesia -- had hit health-damaging levels.

"The fires raging in Kalimantan and Sumatra appear to have been

started deliberately to clear huge tracts of land on plantations as

well as on small farms," the pro-government Straits Times said.

It noted Indonesian timber barons have denied clearing their

plantations systematically by fire, and Indonesia's Coordinating

Minister for People's Welfare Azwar Anas said the fires were caused by

drought due to the climatic phenomenon El Nino.

But the paper quoted an environmental expert saying El Nino does not

start fires.

"Under normal forest conditions, El Nino or no, it is very difficult

to burn the forests because they remain quite wet," said Anthony

Greer, a senior lecturer in environmental science.

"But in this case, the forests have already been intensively logged,

and this makes them easier to burn."

The report says the pictures, taken by the National University of

Singapore (NUS) Centre for Remote Imaging Sensing and Processing, can

pinpoint the fires within 10 to 20 metres.

They are precise enough that "by just looking at the photographs,

Indonesian authorities should be able to tell who owns a piece of land

which has been cleared by fire, or from which plumes of smoke rise,"

the paper said.

"With these pictures, the fire-starters cannot escape. If the

Indonesian authorities need help, we can give it to them," a director

of the NUS centre said.

Singapore Environment Minister Yeo Cheow Tong has urged Indonesia to

take firm action to control the burning, especially when next year's

fire-prone season starts.

On Tuesday, the Straits Times lashed out editorially at Indonesia, a

partner of Singapore in the Association of South East Asian Nations

(ASEAN).

"The patience of Singaporeans and Malaysians is wearing thin," the

editorial said.

"As is evident, the cost of the haze is getting unacceptably high and

it will get higher if not enough Indonesian officials act urgently,

decisively," the daily said in a rare attack after weeks of choking

smog.

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ITEM #6

Title: Fires multiplying in Indonesian disaster: World Wide Fund for

Nature

Source: Agence France-Presse

Date: 9/29/97

JAKARTA, Sept 29 (AFP) - The forest fires now raging in Indonesia are

having catastrophic effects on plant and animal life in one of the

richest and most diverse ecologies on the planet, environmentalists

said Monday.

The fires, blamed for a massive cloud of poisonous smoke blanketing

much of Southeast Asia, are spreading into protected forests and

parkland with more areas threatened, the World Wide Fund for Nature

(WWF) said.

"The effects are devastating on terrestrial, arboreal and maritime

life," said Barita Manullang, project coordinator for the WWF in

Indonesia.

"Devastating because not only the habitat but the food chains are

negatively affected," he added.

Threatened protected areas represent about 20 percent of the massive

area already ravaged by the fires, but the area is growing, he said.

Sources with access to satellite information said the fires have

devastated between 600,000 and 800,000 hectares (1.5 million and two

million acres) on Sumatra and Borneo, mostly agricultural and

industrial land.

Between 40,000 and 60,000 hectares of protected forests have already

burned but the number of fires in protected zones has substantially

increased in recent days, said Barita in an interview with AFP.

His revelation was confirmed by the sources with access to satellite

information but no exact figure was available on Monday.

Smog from the fires, which contain solid particles and toxic

chemicals, has caused at least four deaths in Indonesia alone and more

than 35,000 people have received treatment for respiratory ailments.

The fires were described last week by Babar Ali, the WWF president, as

"an international catastrophe going well beyond the borders of

Indonesia."

The thick haze is also under investigation as a possible cause for a

Garuda Airbus crash on Friday in which 234 people were killed and in

the collision of two ships in the straits of Malacca in which 29 are

missing and believed drowned.

But the fires are also taking an ecological toll.

Indonesia is home to some of the world's most unique bird species,

notably in Irian Jaya and Kalimantan, and they are directly threatened

because most birds in the country feed on fruit.

"No more fruiting before next year. It means a scarcity for the

birds," said Barita. "It is very scary."

Marine life, notably on the coral reefs which contain a diversity of

fish and animal life, is also threatened by the fires.

When the rains finally come, they will cause runoff containing ashes

and earth to flow into the sea and the mass will settle on the coral

and suffocate it, experts said.

On land, the fires are destroying animal habitats, which may have had

a surprising result. The official Antara news agency reported that the

Java Tiger, a sub-species declared extinct in the 1970s, had been seen

near villages on the slopes of Merabu volcano in central Java.

Barita was sceptical about this report as was a tiger specialist who

said "it is not enough, because you spotted a tiger in Java, (to say)

that the Java Tiger still exists."

On the other hand, the fires could have a positive impact, if they are

controlled, Barita said, as they would burn off old growth and allow

new grass to grow. This would be good for grass-feeding animals

including deer and goats -- as well as the carnivores that feed on

them.

But Barita said the burning raised questions about how the burned land

would be later used, charging the fires in protected zones were

deliberately set by people hoping the land could be turned over to

agro-business giants once the forests were destroyed.

He said that's what happened after large fires in 1983 and 1994.

"The biggest and fundamental problem is not the fires but the

encroachment and the diminuation of the habitat," he said.

**********

ITEM #7

Title: Asia's Forest Disaster

Source: New York Times

Date: 9/27/97

The thick smoke spreading throughout Southeast Asia apparently claimed

234 more lives on Friday, when an Indonesian airliner lost its way in

the haze and crashed.

The smoke, coming from forest fires on the Indonesian island of

Sumatra and the Indonesian part of Borneo, now blankets Singapore,

Brunei and parts of Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

The fires are accelerated by drought but were set by man. In its

headlong rush to cut down its timber and sell it, Asia has saddled

itself with the worst deforestation problem of any continent.

Environmentalists have long warned of the consequences. Asian leaders

have dismissed the critics as subversives inspired by the West to try

to stop Southeast Asia's dazzling economic growth. But while previous

fires have not persuaded governments to halt deforestation, Asia's

leaders should now realize that growth is fleeting when based on the

wanton destruction of natural resources.

The Indonesian Government has attributed previous fires to farmers

clearing their land for crops. This time, because the fires have been

burning for months and satellite data is being made public, the

Government has been forced to acknowledge that the fires coincide

mainly with areas of commercial logging on Borneo and Sumatra.

Indigenous farmers use the same environmentally sound farming methods

they have for centuries, rotating between plots of family land.

The problem is the logging companies, which often show up unannounced,

cut the trees, burn the stumps and set up plantations of oil palms or

eucalyptus and acacia trees for paper and pulp -- usually all

without compensating the farmers.

To compound the tragedy, the precious tropical hardwood is then turned

into virtual garbage.

Most of it is milled into plywood and particle board, largely used in

Japanese construction sites as a disposable mold for concrete.

About 10 percent of Indonesia's plywood comes to North America, where

it is used in construction and cheap shelving.

The export of logs is illegal in Indonesia, so they are milled first.

The plywood trade is a cartel controlled by Mohamad (Bob) Hasan, a

billionaire who is President Suharto's golf partner. Though the

Government has vowed to prosecute the companies that set the fires,

the record is not promising. Loggers can pay local forestry officials

to look the other way, and powerful friends of the Suharto family have

remarkably few legal problems.

Indonesia is not alone. Deforestation is more pronounced on the

Malaysian part of Borneo, and is widespread in Cambodia, Thailand and

other countries. In Indonesia, however, the devastation of commercial

logging is compounded by the Government's policy of subsidizing

migration, which until 1986 was supported by the World Bank. Farmers

from the crowded island of Java are encouraged to move to the forests

of Borneo and Sumatra.

Unfortunately, they bring their old techniques, which not work outside

Java's rich volcanic soil and are eating up the forest.

Some good can come of these tragic fires if they persuade Southeast

Asia and the nations that import their products to take forest

protection seriously. The United States should begin by banning

plywood made of tropical hardwood, or requiring country-of-origin

labeling on wood products so consumers can refuse to buy them. Japan,

often the buyer of products created by ruinous environmental

practices, also needs to rethink its import policies. In the end,

however, Southeast Asia's environmental practices will not greatly

improve until corruption and authoritarianism diminish. There is too

much money to be made by powerful people, and too little attention

paid to those groups trying to bring sanity to reckless

growth.

**********

ITEM #8

Title: Indonesian Fires: WWF Calls for Preventive Actions

Source: WWF Forest Alert

Status: For circulation and publication with accreditation

Date: 9/25/97

------------------------ WWF Forest Alert ---------------------

============== http://www.panda.org/home.htm

===============

Forest Alert Update #1

25 September 1997

INDONESIAN FIRES: WWF CALLS FOR PREVENTIVE ACTIONS

GLAND, Switzerland - WWF-World Wide Fund For Nature today declared the

fires raging in Indonesia as a "planetary disaster" and a great

tragedy.

"What is happening in Indonesia is an extreme case of man-made natural

disaster," said Dr Claude Martin, Director General of WWF

International.

"Now we need a coordinated international effort to stop the Indonesian

fires and to prevent similar recurrence. Governments must take urgent

preventive measures such as better monitoring of plantations and

forestry companies' operations."

WWF appreciates President Suharto's gesture of apologizing to

neighbouring countries for the smoke pollution, and the Indonesian

Government's threats to revoke land use permits of plantation firms

found guilty of intentional burning. Plantation owners have been

blamed for much of the fires.

Eighty per cent of the fire comes from burning of waste wood to clear

land, which is cheaper than other alternatives, for oil palm and

industrial pulpwood plantations. Land clearance for commercial

plantations has increased dramatically over the past few years in

response to high palm oil prices.

So far, an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 hectares of plantations and

forests have been burnt creating haze problems in the neighbouring

countries. In addition to the human lives already lost, there is

unprecedented disruption of road, sea and air traffic.

"The sky in southeast Asia has turned yellow, and people are dying,"

added Dr Martin. "What we are witnessing is not just an environmental

disaster but a tremendous health problem being imposed on millions of

people."

With air pollution at such alarming levels, WWF urges action to reduce

vehicle exhaust emissions, and pollutants from factories and

construction operations, mining and energy generation. Contingency

plans are also needed to prevent further deaths and serious illnesses

from deteriorating air quality.

Recent satellite images indicate that fires are now spreading from

scrublands into forests, although there is no indication that any

protected areas in Sumatra nor Kalimantan have been burned. The

lowland tropical rainforests of Sumatra and Kalimantan are among the

most biologically rich ecosystems on Earth. These forests, unlike

those that grow in drier climates are not adapted to fire, and suffer

greater damage when burned. The current persistent drought can

exarcebate the fires and cause irreparable damage to the forests.

WWF is helping the Indonesian Government in locating and monitoring

the fire spots. Staff and equipment have been provided, and the

organization is looking into long term solutions to help prevent

similar occurrence in the future. These solutions include fire

prevention and improved forest management techniques and expertise.

- ends -

Contact: Katarina Panji in Indonesia at tel: +62-21 7203095, Sabri

Zain in Malaysia at tel: +60-3 7033772, or Chng Soh Koon in

Switzerland at tel: +41-22 3649326.

###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###

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