The hazy, lazy - hands-off - days of summer

Once again, it is the haze season across parts of Southeast Asia, caused by forest fires in Indonesia that for the last two months have caused health problems and disrupted flight schedules. It is a recurrence of similar episodes in 1997 and 1998, when forest fires traced to Sumatra and Kalimantan islands in Indonesia caused losses of US$9.3 billion and reached neighboring Malaysia, Singapore and southern Thailand.

Thus, the same questions are being asked this time about effective ways to cope with the haze, which has come as forest fires easily happen amid reduced rainfall in forest-fire prone hot spots. Despite efforts to address the issue by Indonesia alone or by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) nations, the region's main diplomatic grouping, "all the agreements reached have proven ineffective in preventing choking haze and forest fires", said Rizal Sukma of the Center for Strategic International Studies in Jakarta.

Indeed, it is obvious that the Indonesian government - which saw a change of leadership last week - is incapable of dealing with the problem by itself. As Marzuki Usman, state minister of forestry under ousted president Abdurrahman Wahid, put it: "We don't have a clear blueprint of how to cope with the problem." Likewise, Indonesia is preoccupied with domestic problems - a huge budget deficit, high unemployment, threat of national disintegration, prolonged economic crisis and political instability despite a new government.

In all these woes, the environment, and the haze problem, has fallen down Indonesia's priority ladder. "These internal problems have clearly reduced Indonesia's capability in term of economics and politics," Rizal said. Still, regional governments continue to discuss common ways of dealing with the haze problem. Environment officials from four nations - Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei - met recently to discuss it. A conference on community-based fire management in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, in Indonesia took place last week with 200 participants from 25 countries. ASEAN is now in the midst of negotiating an accord on transboundary haze pollution and hopes to sign it in November.

But at the same time, experts say going local may make more headway in fighting the root causes of the forest fires, which in the past have been blamed on forest firms and local people using burning as a means of land clearing. Given Indonesia's financial problems, Southeast Asia Fire Fight project coordinator Peter More says the country should get traditional communities into such fire prevention efforts. "One of the methods of handling forest fires is the empowerment of traditional communities," he was quoted as saying on the sidelines of the Balikpapan conference. More said that land burning happens in all countries that have forests, on even an larger scale and greater intensity.

Some burn more acreage of forests than in Indonesia, but the problem creates more alarm here because it spreads across large parts of Southeast Asia and affects the quality of air, human health and tourism in more countries. "It [controversy] is because Indonesia's forests are mostly situated in border areas with its neighboring countries," he said. Reduced rainfall since the start of July has led to a significant increase in the number of fires and areas of smoke haze in central and northern Sumatra, according to the ASEAN's Haze Watch report.

Indeed, "Haze Watch" reported that in West Kalimantan province in mid-July 88 percent of hotspots resulted from land-clearing activities by farmers as well as forest encroachment using fires. The remaining 12 percent occurred in crop plantation areas and industrial forest plantations. While these fires were not considered large-scale fires, "the situation could get worse when dry condition continues to persist for a long period", it added. So far, more than 2,500 people in Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan, have suffered from respiratory troubles.

Roughly 800 people reported having skin allergies and around 100 people have had eye problems, even as the government disrtributed protective masks for residents. "These are the data on victims who were registered only at the city's public health clinics. The real figure is expected to be much higher," said Oscar Primadi, head of the Pontianak Health Office, last week. North Sumatra has 279 "hot spots" for forest fires scattered across the island, based on the latest satellite photos.

"Now their coverage extends 360 kilometers and will soon spread to the Straits of Malacca as the wind starts blowing from the south," said Tuban Wiyoso, an official of the Meteorological and Geophysics Agency in Medan city, northern Sumatra. Choking haze has also disrupted flights in the Polonia airport of Medan and Supadio airport of Pontianak because visibility in the two airports fell to less than 100 meters recently.

Beyond nature, however, environmentalists pointed to the lackluster performance of Indonesia's legal institutions in enforcing rules designed to counter the recurrence of the haze across the region. In the 1997 forest fires for instance, around 50 forest concessionaires were proven to have initiated the burning. But today, those notorious forest firms are still in operation. Indonesia's Forestry Ministry has blasted some plantation companies, including those that want to develop palm oil plantations, for giving funds to local people to acquire and clear new land by burning.

"They also distribute seeds of palm to villagers to plant in villages along the Riau-North Sumatra border" in western Indonesia, Wahyudi Wardoyo, director-general of Natural Conservation and Forest Protection, told the Community Based Fire Management conference. Indonesia says it has reported imposing zero burning for the plantation companies/concessionaires, and some say it should follow the Malaysian government's step of banning open burning from July to September to prevent the haze problem from getting worse. At a meeting this month, ASEAN officials discussed having Indonesia adopt the same ban, and "Indonesia agreed to consider the suggestion", the "Haze Watch" report said.

The 1997 fire and haze affected 5 million hectares in Indonesia and 70 million people throughout the region, according to a study conducted by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and other partners. The loss to Indonesia for fire-related damages was mainly in timber, agriculture, direct and indirect forest benefits, biological resources and fire-fighting costs, and amounted to $2.78 billion. As for Singapore and Malaysia, the major economic costs involved firefighting and the release of carbon into the atmosphere.

The damage was valued at $285.5 million. For now, Indonesia has to rely on the neighbors affected by the haze to help it put out the environmental problem. Singapore has been supplying satellite images to Jakarta to help it pinpoint the fires and has set up stations to measure pollution levels. "Every year, we spend 200,000 Singapore dollars (US$109,280) for the satellite pictures alone," Joseph Hui of the Singaporean environment ministry was quoted as saying by Indonesia's Antara news agency. (Inter Press Service) (Sumber : Asia Times Online, 31 Juli 2001).