July 29, p1

The Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has warned that the dry season could last longer than in previous years because of a weather phenomenon known as El Niño, which affects temperatures and rainfall.

A total of 4,763 hotspots, indicating wildfires, were detected across Indonesia during the period between Jan. 1 and July 23 this year.

Singapore has repeatedly urged Indonesia to provide data on companies and concession maps to enable it to act against plantation firms that allow slash-and-burn farming, saying that it will send an unequivocal signal that ASEAN countries are prepared to be transparent and hold individual companies accountable for their actions.

Your comments:

Burning is one of the most popular land or forest clearing techniques in Indonesia to free some land and forest for cultivation.

During the dry season, fires spread like, well, wildfire.

It'€™s fatalistic and wrong to suggest there'€™s no way to ban, or at least regulate, forest fires. It'€™s the same mentality as myopic nationalists who intone '€œthere is no way we can fight corruption.'€ That is why Indonesia is still saturated with corruption even 18 years after reformation. There is always a way!

Indonesia is not the only country in the world with dense jungle or bushes. Fixing bureaucracy and law enforcement is the place to start.

Roy Theodorus Purnomo

It'€™s not hard to figure out who starts fires, but it seems more complicated to bring about prosecutions. That is something I am not competent to speculate on. That is what I have to breathe in everyday.

Abu-Abu

Most owners of palm-oil plantations in Sumatra own the licenses to open up protected areas of conservation forest by bribing corrupt officials inside the department of forestry, as well as local government and law enforcement officials.

Greedy Indonesians refuse to give the investors abandoned secondary forests because hacking virgin forests yields timber worth billions of dollars for their personal pockets.

Besides that, too many timber companies (owned by conscienceless millionaires) reserve their allocated tracts of land, preferring to trespass on the zones outside their license.

Last year a company that was caught red-handed transporting stolen timber insisted that the source was from their own forest, and they got away with it (or perhaps bought their way out), even though conservationists proved that this company'€™s allocated tract was still 100 percent intact.

For over 17 years, while the millionaires go on vacation each time there is fire and haze, the poor locals of Riau suffer, and suffer greatly. I know for a fact that a team of very hard working and decent intellectuals have developed sophisticated fire-tackling methodologies, but with the change of governments, nothing gets implemented.

Iau Aro

Once again Indonesia demonstrates that it is the regions'€™ nightmare neighbor.

Rusty

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar needs to make sure Indonesia is a good neighbor and stop polluting other countries.

Stop logging and preserve the environment and protect the flora and fauna especially the endangered species. How difficult is that?

We have had the Stone Age, the industrial age and we are in the age of communications. You know computers. With this background Minister Siti says she is finding it difficult to supply a list of companies to Singapore. We can all see when someone is prevaricating.

Acropolous

The interesting thing about these fires is that twice a year you burn the countryside and cause huge damage to the health of your own countrymen. There is massive economic damage because of disrupted transport and the expense of fire fighting.

Testi

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