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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Fires
Again Ravage Indonesia's Forests
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
http://forests.org/
3/25/98
OVERVIEW
& COMMENTARY by EE
The
effects of industrial forestry and inappropriate tropical land
management
as has been practiced in Indonesia and Malaysia, and is in
the
process of being exported to virtually all remaining rainforests
worldwide,
are becoming fully realized. Once again
Indonesian fires
are
sending haze across the region. The
East Asian crisis is as much
an
ecological as an economic catastrophe, as growth based upon
wholesale
ecosystem liquidation and weak environmental protection
proves
illusory, short-lived and ultimately provides little real
development,
while long-term prospects for self-reliant, sustainable
livelihoods
are foregone. The magnitude of the
tropical forest crisis
must be
realized and resources mobilized to stabilize globally
critical
tropical ecosystems. Following is the
latest on the
blazes...
g.b.
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RELAYED
TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Fires Again Ravage Indonesia's Forests
Asia: Farmers, timber companies set
blazes to clear
land. Haze threatens region already
in economic crisis.
Source: The Los Angeles Times
Status: Copyright, contact source to reprint
Date: Monday, March 23, 1998
Byline: David Lamb
AMARINDA,
Indonesia--The man-made Indonesian fires that blanketed
Southeast
Asia last autumn with clouds of choking haze are burning
again,
raising the specter that another environmental disaster looms
just
ahead.
When
that earlier haze--a regional euphemism for fire-caused
pollution--swept
over Southeast Asia, it closed airports, crippled
tourism
and caused serious health problems. Now, in every direction,
flames
and tufts of smoke are rising from the scorched and smoldering
earth,
and, acre by acre, one of the world's last great rain forests
is
being eaten away, leaving one German forest-management expert to
comment:
"We are at the point of no return."
On
Sunday, the Suara Pembaruan newspaper in the capital, Jakarta,
reported
that smoke from the fires has caused 297 cases of pneumonia
and
that two people have died.
Here on
the road to Balikpapan, the flames are no bigger than those
from
the coals of a barbecue grill, but they have given the drought-
ravaged
land an eerie reddish glow and, whipped to and fro by hot,
heavy
winds, have crept to the very doorstep of Omar Kamorusn's one-
room
wooden home.
"Of
course I worry we will burn," he said. "But what can we do to stop
it? Our
nearest water is an hour's walk. My only equipment is a rake
and
shovel. But this is nothing new. We have fires every year. They
are how
we live."
If he
didn't set fires, the 46-year-old Kamorusn said, there would be
no way
to clear the land for his crops of rice and peppercorn. He
knows
that the government has forbidden burning, but his family has
been
doing it for generations. And, when the land is less dry, the
fires
can be controlled with ditches and firebreaks.
He
added, "If we do not burn, we do not eat."
In
Samarinda, German environmentalists tracking the brush fires
through
satellite images have pinpointed 1,000 blazes here on the
island
of Borneo. Some were set by peasant farmers such as Kamorusn.
But the
majority, the Germans say, are on land leased by powerful
timber
companies--many with ties to the top levels of the Indonesian
government--that
still use slash-and-burn techniques as the fastest,
cheapest
way to convert rain forests into timber estates and palm-oil
plantations.
Indonesia
has more than 10% of the world's rain forests, and 40% of
Asia's.
And each year, says the international environmental
organization
Earth Action, the nation is destroying an area larger
than
Lebanon. Only Brazil's rain forests are disappearing at a faster
rate.
One of
the world's largest exporters of wood products, Indonesia
desperately
needs its logging income, particularly with its current
economic
crisis. Although the government has forbidden clearing land
by
fire, and some government officials have shown concern about the
impact
of fire and haze, the timber companies' links to the regime of
President
Suharto make corrective action difficult.
"The
government has the exact coordinates of every fire and would like
to make
an example by closing down one of the companies," said Ludwig
Shindler,
a German fire-management expert. "But a lot of companies are
protected
and can't be touched, for obvious reasons."
Last
year, 160 Indonesian companies were accused of culpability. Only
46 were
fully investigated, and only five will be prosecuted. In
Malaysia,
the government fined 17 companies for ignoring a no-burn
policy.
Their collective penalty amounted to $8,000.
Among
the companies accused last year of torching Indonesia's East
Kalimantan
province on Borneo was a subsidiary of Astra International,
which
is run by Mohammed "Bob" Hasan, Indonesia's timber tycoon and a
member
of Suharto's new Cabinet. He rejected criticism that the timber
companies
have been reckless.
"We
want to develop our country on a sustainable basis," Hasan told
the
BBC. "But sometimes, NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] come in
and say
you are violating environmental rules . . . human rights." He
rejected
the accusations as the work of Communists.
The
latest outbreak of fires, coming after last year's blazes were
finally
extinguished by seasonal rains, raises the threat that
Southeast
Asia, already laboring under a regionwide economic downturn,
will
have to endure another season of debilitating haze. It is a
threat
that could have political as well as economic repercussions.
Towns
around Samarinda are already on red alert, and some days the
haze is
thick enough to close roads and reduce visibility to 60 feet.
The
Malaysian city of Kuching on Borneo recorded an air pollution
index
reading of 400 recently--four times what is considered
unhealthy.
When the prevailing winds blow toward the north in April or
May,
the haze could again be blown into Singapore, Brunei, the
Philippines
and peninsular Malaysia.
Malaysia
is especially concerned. It has invested $520 million to host
the
Commonwealth Games in September, and a repeat of last year's haze
could
keep tourists away in droves and result in health problems for
athletes.
And
Singapore, among others, fears that if, as now seems likely, haze
has
become part of Indonesia's foreign policy and one of its exports,
the
regional economic recovery that is just taking hold in some
countries
will be seriously set back.
"If
we do not help them [Indonesians], the economic losses to us and
the
entire region are tremendous," Singapore's environment minister,
Yeo
Cheow Tong, said. "Whatever we can spend to help will be money
well
spent."
In many
ways, Western political analysts say, the region's financial
crisis
and the return of the fires stem from the same root: an
unwillingness
to enforce stringent regulations that apply to everyone,
not
just to those who have no links to the top levels of government.
The
fires, the analysts say, have just one underlying cause--poor
forest
management.
Environment
ministers of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations have
reacted
more quickly to the latest rash of fires than they did to the
disaster
last year. Meeting in Kuching last month, they adopted
measures
calling on Malaysia to focus on fire prevention, Singapore to
concentrate
on satellite monitoring and Indonesia to stick to fighting
the
fires.
The
problem is that Indonesia has no effective means to battle the
blazes.
Its effort to induce rain by using three planes for cloud-
seeding
proved futile, and its handful of tanker trucks is only useful
fighting
fires along roadsides. A crash program is underway to train
1,000
soldiers as firefighters.
But
such steps may prove meaningless without new governmental
directions.
With Indonesia's population growing by 2 million a year,
the
government's official policy is to convert more than 40 million
acres
of rain forest to farmland and living space by 2020.
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