The Indonesian government says forest fires that sent a heavy smoke over large areas of Southeast Asia are receding...Earlier, state forestry officials and a company controlled by a timber tycoon were among 29 operations which lost their permits in a government crackdown. Indonesian newspapers report that 69 of the 151 revoked permits belonged to four government companies. Source(s):

http://www.ippl.org/indonesia.html...

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Lack of equipment, commitment hamper fight against forest fires
August 29, 2006

TheJakartaPost.com - A good intention will not yield results without good implementation, wise men say.

Three months ago President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told his ministers, governors and regents to do their utmost to halt haze-producing forest fires, to spare him the humiliation of once again explaining to ASEAN leaders why the country has failed to handle the situation.

But in his state of the nation address, delivered before the parliament on Aug. 16, Yudhoyono acknowledged that his subordinates seemed to have done nothing to carry out his order.

"We have still seen several occurrences of fires in the last couple of weeks. I really regret this situation," he said.

"It (preventing forest fires) correlates with the responsibility, concern and leadership of regional administrations," he added.

However, Yudhoyono failed to note that curbing the fires calls for more than just the values he cited. Analysts say it takes additional human resources and cash, as well as the commitment to sign an international agreement.

The head of the Central Kalimantan Natural Resources Conservation Office (BKSDA), Yohannes Sudharto, said his team of firefighters was no match for the flames that had occurred in hundreds of places across the province.

"We have only a handful of trained firefighters," he said. "We are outnumbered."

Yohannes' office assembled 15 teams of firefighters in 2000. Each consists of nine men: two from the government and seven from the community. In total, fewer than 150 trained firefighters work in the province.

These men are stacked up against the more than 500 so-called "hot spots" that occur every day during the land-clearing season in July and August.

One hot spot represents roughly 1.1 square kilometers, meaning that thousands of hectares of land have been ravaged since the fires started in July.

"We cannot handle such massive fires with such limited human resources," said Aliansyah, one of the nine BKSDA forest fire fighters who struggled for three days to put out fires that raged on 25 hectares of peat lands in the outskirts of Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan.

He and his colleagues receive Rp 20,000 (about US$2.20) every day when they are on duty plus Rp 180,000 monthly. He said none of the fire fighters were covered by health insurance, however, nor were they equipped with personal protective equipment.

"Well, thank God, so far no-one has gotten injured or sick," said Aliansyah, who has spent nine years fighting forest fires across Borneo.

The Forestry Ministry claims it has deployed some 1,500 fire fighters in eight provinces in Sumatra and Kalimantan, which are prone to annual forest fires.

However, this number also appears sorely insufficient, as satellite images showed more than 10,000 hot spots in Sumatra and Borneo in the last two months.

In Riau, about 120 firefighters have failed to curb a blaze that has been ravaging some 2,000 hectares of land and forests. The fire has destroyed parts of the more than 38,000-hectare Tesso Nillo national park, home to some endangered species of elephants and tigers.

Firefighters have been trying to extinguish the blaze since last month. Realizing they were outnumbered, the Riau provincial administration deployed 600 military personnel to help fight fires in the province.

"They are tasked with dousing the fires and arresting people who illegally clear land," the head of the province's environmental impact management agency, Khairul Zainal, told AFP.

The Forestry Ministry said an additional 375 men would reinforce 1,500 firefighters who have been battling fires in South Sumatra and West Kalimantan.

Yohannes said lack of personnel was not the only problem. His office has only seven pumping machines, of which only three can extract sufficiently large volumes of water.

"It's difficult to find water sources during this dry season. Most of the sewers or wells are shallow, and we can only use the big pumping machines," he said.

The Central Kalimantan arm of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi Kalteng) dismissed such arguments, saying the government and regional administrations had undermined the potential of local communities to help extinguish the fires.

"The government should give local communities, who are mostly farmers, incentives. Not by paying them, but by supporting their agricultural activities, such as subsidizing fertilizers," said Walhi Kalteng director Satriadi.

"That way, they will do anything to keep land and forests from burning," he said.

World Wide Fund for Nature Indonesia senior official Fitrian Ardiansyah suggested that to discourage the use of fire to clear land, the government should assist farmers in clearing their land for each new planting season.

"The farmers are just looking for the cheapest way to clear their land. If they were aware that other environmentally-friendly and cost-effective methods were available, they would be more than happy to stop burning land," said Fitrian, who is WWF's program coordinator for forest restoration and threat mitigation.

Fitrian argued the most important step the government could take was to quickly ratify the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, so that ASEAN members could send support to combat Indonesia's rampant forest fires.

He said Forestry Ministry concerns that the pact would lead to the central government, rather than Indonesia's regional governments, being blamed for the fires, should not be allowed to delay ratification.

"This agreement is the first in the world at the regional level that requires countries to jointly tackle transboundary haze pollution caused by forest and land fires," he said.

Without rejecting that suggestion, Masyhud said the government is upbeat that it can handle the problem.

He said the government has done its best and, with or without neighboring countries' help, it would continue to do its best to put out the fires.

Logging companies fingered for forest fires
September 06, 2006

IOL (Independent Online wholly owned subsidiary of Independent News & Media) - Jakarta - An Indonesian environmentalist group has accused more than 100 logging and plantation companies of being involved in forest fires that have sent choking smoke and haze across parts of the South-East Asia, local media reports said Wednesday.

The Indonesian Forum of Environment (Walhi) listed logging companies, industrial timber estates and palm-oil plantations, including Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper, as being behind the annual widespread forest fires in the country.

"They should be held responsible because every year fires occur in their concessions," The Jakarta Post quoted Chalid Muhammad, Walhi's executive director, as saying.

Muhammad said the annual forest fires had destroyed up to 27 million hectares of forests in the country in the past five years.

Thick haze from the fires and cropland burnings have blanketed cities in Sumatra and West Kalimantan province on the Indonesian part of Borneo for the past several weeks, delaying airline flights and causing a health hazard to residents.

Walhi strongly denied claims by senior government officials that nomadic farmers were behind the haze, saying that only 19 percent of the fires occur on privately owned land and outside the firms' concessions.

"The problem is how to get tough with the companies, not to arrest farmers," Muhammad argued.

Meanwhile, the state-run Antara news agency quoted Environmental Minister Rachmad Witular as saying that his office has planned to issue a regulation to seize land cleared through burning of forests.

The annual haze generated in Indonesia is at its worst during the dry season, which runs from July to October.

The choking smoke have frequently affected neighbouring countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Thailand.

Indonesia banned the practice of open field burning in 1999 after widespread fires caused a thick haze to blanket parts of Indonesia and surrounding nations.

Breaking the law could result in up to 10 years in prison and a $1,06-million (about R6-million) fine.

However, enforcement of the law is often lax, activists and experts said, explaining that in addition to corrupt officials turning a blind eye, legal proceedings are also hampered because the country's criminal code requires the police to provide solid proof, such as matches, gasoline and witnesses.

Hundreds of police officers were deployed last week to help extinguish raging fires in Riau in efforts that included dropping water bombs and creating manmade rain. - Sapa-dpa