http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3738&Itemid=226
Indonesia Smokes Up its Neighbors
Written by Our Correspondent
Monday, 12 September 2011
Haze from illegal logging, oil palm planting becomes a hazard
Despite numerous promises by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that it would
stop, the burning of Indonesia’s rainforest is continuing, to the point where
the haze is so thick that schools are closing, airplanes are being diverted and
has reached the point where 60 percent of Malaysia is experiencing moderate
pollution.
Indonesia’s immediate neighbors are expected to bring up the choking haze on
Sept. 22 at a two-day meeting of environment ministers from member states of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to be held in Bangkok. The meeting
is part of an annual series to discuss cross-boundary haze issues, so far to no
avail.
In May, Yudhoyono signed a much-publicized two-year moratorium as part of a
US$1 billion climate deal with Norway for emissions credits to cut global
levels of greenhouse gases. However, Indonesia’s forestry ministry makes
billions of dollars handing out permits to oil palm plantations to clear forest
for oil palm production. The moratorium has been described as a disaster by
environmentalists who say it is full of loopholes that favor the oil palm
companies.
Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of palm oil, the country’s fourth
largest export category, contributing 8.54 percent of export earnings to the
country’s coffers. In addition, although agriculture provides only 15.3 percent
of gross domestic product, it employs 38.3 percent of the population. Indonesia
is also the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, much of it from
illegal the logging of primary forest and burning the remains and the peatlands
that undergird the forest.
The government has said it intends to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases
by 26 percent against current levels, now producing something on the order of
2.05 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. Almost 80 percent of Indonesia’s
current emissions stem from deforestation and land use change. Indonesia’s
ability to control greenhouse gases is important because, according to the
United Nations, 15-20 percent of the world’s gas reduction potential will come
from forest and peat.
Behind the haze, however, is an even denser air of bureaucratic inertia and
entrenched corruption that continues to thrwart the aims of the international
compact known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).
REDD had proposed including secondary forest as well as untouched primary
forest, less and less of which continues to exist each year. Officials estimate
that some 35 million hectares have already been degraded. The forestry ministry
can’t agree on how much primary forest remains and is subject to REDD, saying
55 million hectares of primary forest are subject to the moratorium. The
president’s office, however, says it should be 64 million hectares of primary
forest and another 20 million hectares of peatlands.
Despite the complicated plans for REDD, the burning is continuing unabated. It
appears likely to stay that way. A deeply detailed article in August by Reuters
news service reporters described just one multimillion dollar project covering
90,000 hectares that had been intended as a showcase forest preservation
project. It was near collapse, however, “a casualty of labyrinthine Indonesian
bureaucracy, opaque laws and a secretive palm oil company” that wanted the deep
peatland forest for development. After the expenditure of more than US$2
million in development costs, the project was cut in half by the forestry
ministry, making it unviable.
The ministry, according to the article, earns $15 billion a year in land permit
fees from investors. Those fees are regarded as a limitless source of
corruption for forestry officials and politicians. Indonesia Corruption Watch,
a private watchdog, was quoted by Reuters as saying illegal logging and
violations in issuing forest use permits deliver ill-gotten gains estimated at
Rp20 trillion ($2.3 billion) each year.
In the meantime, Indonesia’s neighbors are getting fed up with the haze, which
occurs every year but seems worse in 2011. The Malaysian Environment Minister,
Douglas Uggah Embas, last Friday sent a letter to his Indonesian counterpart,
Gusti Muhammad Hatta, complaining about the hundreds of fires on Sumatra that
have blanketed his country in smoke. Routinely school children are issued
thousands of face masks in Johor and Negeri Sembilan provinces of Malaysia
because of the smoke. Tourism in the resort city of Penang has often been badly
affected by the haze.
Embas was quoted by the national news agency Bernama as saying Malaysia would
push for the establishment of a regional fire-fighting squad to combat fires in
ASEAN member countries. That pretty much comes down to Indonesia as the
culprit.
Singapore has also expressed concern that haze from fires in Riau Province,
across the Strait of Malacca, could affect the Formula 1 race and qualifying
round scheduled from Sept. 23-25. There are fears that the racers, in cars
which reach speeds over 300 kilometers per hour on Singapore’s streets at
night, will be unable to see far enough ahead to negotiate the track.
Lion Air, now Indonesia’s biggest private airline, said it was diverting
flights on the route between Jakarta and Jambi, a southern Sumatran province.
Officials said it was the first time this year that the airline had been forced
to divert a flight because of thick haze. Indonesia was deploying three
aircraft for a month to South Sumatra and Riau to attempt to sow clouds with
silver iodide crystals in an attempt to induce rain. Rain has already started
in West and Central Kalimantan, on Borneo, so the rainmakers will skip those
two areas.
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