Indonesia Blames Timber Firms for Most Fires

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

4/7/98

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by EE

Indonesia's environment minister has stated that 65% of the area

recently burned is owned by timber firms which have been deliberately

clearing land using fire. This admission is a far cry from months of

knee jerk blaming of peasants practicing subsistence agriculture.

This is not to say that the latter has not contributed. However, the

well-connected Indonesian timber industry has not been confronted with

their culpability, taken responsibility and made the necessary forest

management changes. Clearly, Indonesian style forest management is a

once over harvest, after which the forest is left to burn or otherwise

be cleared. Failure to address the failings of Indonesian style

industrial forestry will have dire consequences to Indonesia's

forests, and all other places where it is being replicated.

g.b.

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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: INDONESIA BLAMES TIMBER FIRMS FOR MOST FIRES - PAPER

Source: Reuters

Date: April 5, 1998

JAKARTA - Indonesia's environment minister said timber companies are

to blame for two-thirds of devastating bush and forest fires in East

Kalimantan and that it will cost up to $3 billion to put them all out,

a newspaper reported on Friday.

The Jakarta Post quoted Juwono Sudarsono as saying 65 percent of the

nearly 160,000 hectares (406,400 acres) burned in East Kalimantan

since January belonged to timber companies.

He said the fires were being deliberately lit for land-clearing.

"The land clearing activities are intentional," he told reporters.

"But the problem is that the fires have become uncontrollable as they

were not well monitored."

Fires last year ravaged hundreds of thousands of hectares of

Indonesian forest and farmland causing smog which triggered health

alerts in Indonesia and neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore.

East Kalimantan, on the Indonesian part of Borneo, has banned the

lighting of fires without permission, but environmental agencies have

said many companies and local farmers have ignored the ruling.

"Personally, I think it will require at least $2 billion to $3 billion

(to extinguish) the fires," the environment minister told reporters.

He did not elaborate.

Indonesia is undergoing its worst economic crisis in decades prompting

a $43 billion bail-out package led by the International Monetary Fund.

Environment ministers of the nine-member Association of South East

Asian Nations (ASEAN) are holding a weekend conference in Brunei to

discuss the blazes.

The fires in East Kalimantan are already much worse than in 1997 when

37,092 hectares (94,213 acres) were destroyed.

An enduring drought has made conditions ripe for the fires and smoke

has already created an acrid cloud over the province, causing

thousands of people to fall ill.

The fires have also destroyed large areas of forest habitat of

endangered orang-utans, many of which are said to be starving while

others have been killed by villagers or poachers.

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