Center for International Forestry Research
Bogor, Indonesia
cifor@cgnet.com
http://www.cgiar.org/cifor
CIFOR POSITION ON FIRES IN INDONESIA
The Center for International Forestry Research is deeply concerned at the
extent and severity of fires in forested areas of Indonesia, especially
Sumatra and Kalimantan, in the latter part of the 1997 dry season. We
believe these fires are a symptom of deficiencies in forest management
systems and in policies and regulations on the clearance of forest land for
agriculture.
We are concerned that media reports have under-estimated the extent to which
much of the burning is deliberate and is motivated by the desire of people
to take advantage of the exceptionally dry conditions to clear land for
agricultural uses --both large scale and small. We are seeing a scramble for
land at the forest frontier.
Some local people may fear that if they do not secure rights to their
traditional lands, they will lose them, either now or in the near future, to
large government-sponsored agricultural or forestry development programmes.
Some use fires to clear land simply to plant a few cash-crop trees in order
to establish their claims to land.
The problems are exacerbated by improved road infrastructure in remote areas
which permits easier access for outsiders. These migrants are also burning
to clear land and establish landclaims.
The government has licensed and stimulated many companies to develop new
industrial estates of rubber, oil-palm and timber, as well as Transmigration
sites. These activities also need to clear land, and fires are their
cheapest option.
The impacts of the fires are much greater in areas where forests and
agriculture overlie deposits of peat. These peat deposits have accumulated
over the last five to ten thousand years and represent a huge store of
carbon which is significant at a global level. Burning this stored carbon
has far more severe environmental impacts than simply burning the annual
accumulations of plant material as in traditional shifting agriculture
systems. Burning peat contributes to the build-up of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere and also releases particulate matter and sulphur and nitrous
oxides, which make the ÊhazeË a greater threat to human health.
CIFOR supports recent efforts to control the fires; measures mobilising
people and equipment into action to prevent further damage, especially to
public health, the environment, the economy, and to neighbouring countries,
is appropriate. Yet CIFOR also wishes to emphasise that short term
ÊsolutionsË to the problems of these fires will be insufficient.
Extinguishing fires will be costly and inefficient. The real solution is
to adopt better long term policies and regulations to improve general land
stewardship standards, to resolve unclear or contested land tenure, and to
reinforce a fire management system to ensure that similar fires do not recur
when the next El Ni¤o event produces another drought early in the 21st
century.
A major long term goal must be to ensure that programs to open up new areas
for agriculture take into account the consequent fire hazards that these
programmes can create. In general, great caution should be exercised in
allocating any peat-land areas for agricultural development. There are
enormous problems in maintaining soil fertility on these sites and in many
cases the best long term economic use will be some form of forestry. It is
our view that decisions on large scale land clearing have often been made
without full appreciation of the values of the forests. This is particularly
true of the forestsÉ value to the local communities who usually derive many
important products from the forest. Such local values have rarely been taken
into account in land development programmes.
Fire is an essential part of the traditional swidden cultivation systems
that characterise many tropical forest areas. Burning is a legitimate land
management practice and is not necessarily bad if done by people who know
what they are doing. Careful use of fire in humid forests, by people who
feel secure in the ownership of their land, has occurred for centuries. In
the current context, peopleÉs incentives to burn could be substantially
reduced if Indonesia would move ahead more rapidly in reconciling the
contradictions between ÈadatÉ law & central government forest and land use
laws.
Ways must also be found to help people deal with the drier conditions (and
resultant greater flammability) of forests, that accompany logging and the
development of industrial timber plantations. Clearer land tenure laws
could reduce the incentive that people now have to burn forest-land and
plant crops, rubber and other trees simply to register their claim to use
the land. Experience in other tropical regions has shown that if people
have security of access to forested land they have less incentive to clear
forests. CIFOR recognises the complexity of this issue, and the need to
clarify ownership carefully and in a manner consistent with local norms,
values and traditions.
CIFOR research has demonstrated that relatively inexpensive Êreduced impact
loggingË techniques can greatly reduce the amount of debris left after
logging operations. This in turn reduces the danger of fires and the
intensity of any fires that do occur. CIFORÉs guidelines have now been
adopted in legislation in Sabah and the events of this year indicate the
importance of getting similar regulations incorporated into Indonesian
forestry practice.
Our overall conclusion is that it is essential that we learn lessons from
the 1997 fires. The fires in 1983, 1991 and 1994 provoked considerable
international short term interest. But the measures taken were palliative
and did not address the root causes of the problem. We must document and
understand exactly what happened in 1997 and investigate policies and
regulatory measures that will reduce the risks of similar fires occurring in
future drought years.
file: g/share/dg/fires97.doc :in 6 October 1997
Some comments on the above statement:
----------
From: William Sunderlin
I think it's useful to bear in mind the ways in which an El Nino event can
greatly increase the possibility of simultaneous and uncontrolled fires.
However I think it would be a serious mistake to lend credence to the
argument (voiced recently by certain Indonesian government officials) that
the El Nino event is the fundamental cause of the devastating fires. This
line of argument is being used to excuse the nonenforcement of laws,
regulations, and procedures designed to confront the possibility of
drought-enduced fires. The relevance of El Nino is that it created the
circumstances in which fire prevention policies (designed in response to
past El Nino events) should have been fully and forcefully implemented.
Some policies were applied, but not fully and forcefully.
You are right that Djamaludin and Dephut did respond early. According to an
interview with Djamaludin in Media Indonesia (September 21, 1997, p. 4) it
was announced as early as December of last year that there might be a
drought and that therefore preventive measures should be taken. Reportedly,
an order was issued by Dephut and Transmigrasi instructing that fire should
not be used for clearing land. Moreover Minister of Agriculture Sjarifudin
Baharsjah, according to the Jakarta Post (September 2, 1997), said that his
ministry had banned the use of controlled burning in developing plantation
areas. It is to their great credit that Djamaludin and Sjarifudin and
others took these steps early on. Nonetheless, the reality is that there
was not enough power and vigor behind these measures to prevent the eruption
of massive and uncontrolled fires. The lesson here, I believe, is that the
political power and will to implement and improve policies is what is truly
fundamental.
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From: Rajindra Puri
I would like to raise a question about the second sentence of the first
paragraph: it is the "sound bite" of the statement and is likely to be
picked up by newsagencies looking for a quote. I think there should be some
mention of drought caused by El Nino as exacerbating the conditions and
contributing to the extent of simultaneous burning across Indonesia. There
seems to be a natural temporal and spatial separation of burning events due
to asynchronous wet seasons across the archipelago. For instnace,annual
burning events in interior and coastal East Kalimantan (less than 200 km in
distance) may be two months apart. A drought in an El Nino year allows
these barriers to be breached. Add to this the burning caused by new HTIs
and the problem is compounded. Regulation of times for burning during a
drought year would help. I also understand that the MENHUT warned or forbid
(??) companies, not to burn this year. Maybe some of these ideas could be
considered by the editors. Thanks.
----------
From: Carol Colfer
I remain concerned about the accuracy of the third paragraph about local
people clearing land to establish their rights. It is true that rights are
established traditionally in most forested areas I know about by clearing.
However, the statement as it now reads implies they are doing that now to
protect their rights. That is not consistent with what I have observed in
the field over the past 18 years; and Wil made the same comment. Perhaps we
are misunderstanding the intent in the press release, but if so, so might
others. If there is evidence that this is happening---burning by local
people (who almost by definition have long-established claims to the land in
the area) to establish claims now, I would be interested to hear it. If
there is no evidence, I think we ought to change the statement in our press
release.
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