Erik Meijaard, Jakarta
Fires are back as a major news item. They do that pretty much every year. Fires and haze are nothing new to this region with reports of thick smoke from Kalimantan dating back to 1877.
The regional aerosol index, kept since 1978, also shows that about every three years parts of Indonesia and neighboring countries are covered in thick smog. Still this is probably the worst fire and haze episode since the 1997 events that burned so much land in Sumatra and Kalimantan.
The causes of fires are very complex. Basically in Kalimantan and Sumatra anyone seeking to increase the value or fertility of land, or lay claim to it, and finding it well stocked with dry biomass, will torch it. Fire ""cleans up"" the vegetation structure and increases soil fertility, if only briefly, and thus allows the planting of rice, oil palm and many other crops.
Fires in Indonesia are unlike those in countries like Australia, the U.S., or southern Europe. In those countries, the person with the match will rarely lay claim to the burnt land or start planting crops. In Indonesia, however, economic reasons play a much bigger role as causes of fire.
For example, people here burn to increase access for fishing, or to capture land turtles, or plant hill rice. Or they burn their neighbor's land if there is a conflict over ownership. Or they lay claim to land which wasn't originally theirs, as burning establishes such unofficial claims. Finally there is small or large scale land clearing for commercial enterprises such plantations.
Many of the fire debates that have recently appeared in the national media focus on the 'who is to blame' question; small holders or agro-industrial plantations. In a way that distinction is rather unhelpful. For over two decades environmental groups have been calling for the prosecution of arsonists, especially the industrial-sized ones. Without law enforcement the 'who burned' question is largely irrelevant. I think the 'why' and 'where' offers more likely solutions.
Let's delve a little deeper. There must be some pretty simple numbers underlying fires. If a farmer owns a garden with durian trees that result in an annual income of Rp 5 million (US$560), he will fight very hard to protect his garden against fire, unless he expects the burnt land to generate more than Rp 5 million per year. Similarly, a timber concession with 50 cubic meter of harvestable timber per hectare worth $5,000 will not allow that to go up in smoke. This may only make economic sense if after burning, the company is allowed to salvage log all timber and subsequently plant industrial crops. Only then the resulting annual income from the land may surpass the value potentially derived from sustainable timber harvest.
So one of the logical solutions to the fire problem would be to ensure that the present value of natural vegetation or crops is higher than that of the land post-burning. And it is easy to see that this is likely to work. Most fire hotspots this year occur outside forest areas in land that was already degraded.
They are thus not really forest fires, but more often scrub or grassland fires, or fires on degraded peat lands. The best prevention of fires is thus to ensure that high value forests are maintained or high value crops are planted. If local stakeholders then have clear ownership over these resources they will protect them against fires. The larger picture of this is an accelerated sustainable development of forestry and agriculture. At least it would offer real solution to the fire and haze problem as well as many social and economic issues.
In addition, a prohibition on crop planting on burnt land would make law enforcement much easier. In that case the burden of proof becomes lighter. There is no need to prove who did the burning in the first place. There only needs to be a link between the presence of crops and the evidence of recent local burning. If such links exist, crops may be destroyed by the law enforcer.
Such laws can be phased in slowly maybe by first focusing on large areas of burnt land. This would quickly stop industrial burning, and in the longer term reduce slash-and-burn agriculture. At the same time, there should be a concerted effort to promote crop development on degraded land to raise its value and thus provide the incentive to protect it against fires. There are plenty of ways to do this without resorting to fire.
The legal framework for all this exists in Indonesia. There are laws against burning and there are laws against forest conversion. Clearly laws on land tenureship require updating giving real security to whoever manages the land. And there should be species focus on peat burning which probably causes most of the smoke and leads to rapid environmental degradation of these sensitive ecosystems.
Accurate spatial information is also needed, allowing the government to conduct spatial planning that is in line with those laws. An area of dense natural forest should never be earmarked for oil palm. A large area that was burnt this year should not have extensive pepper gardens, rice field, or Acacia plantations.
In the end all this remains theoretical without the political will to change it. Luckily the international pressure is on and Indonesia will have to get their act together. Investing heavily in cloud seeding or water bombers might give the right sound bites but it will not solve the problem.
Continuing the debate on farmers versus companies is also not going to clear up the skies. Taking away the financial incentive for burning is the most likely way of preventing further environmental disasters like the one Indonesia forces onto its neighbors year in year out.
The writer works as senior forest ecologist at The Nature Conservancy. He can be contacted at emeijaard@tnc.org. The views expressed here are his own.
