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Govt. prepares against forest fires as dry season peaks
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Firefighters battling a peatland forest fire in Ogan Ilir, South Sumatra, on Sept. 23, 2019. (AFP/Abdul Qodir)
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s this year’s dry season starts to approach its peak, the government is preparing prevention measures to keep land and forest fires under control in a bid to prevent massive fires that could cause trans-boundary haze.
Political, Security and Legal Affairs Coordinating Minister Mahfud MD said the government was preparing three main approaches: cross ministry and agency coordination, technology preparation, as well as identifying locations and periods that were prone to fires.
“We know the locations prone to fires and when they can occur. For example we’ve predicted that we will see fires flare up in August and September,” Mahfud said on Thursday.
Earlier that day, the minister met with officials from the Environment and Forestry Ministry, National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), the Indonesian Military, the National Police and regional administrations.
According to government data, some 2.6 million hectares were burned in 2015, the worst in recent decades. The second worse was in 2019 in which the government recorded 1.6 million ha of land and forest burned.
As of June 30, 59,130 hectares of land and forests had been burned.
Mahfud said that in the past five years, Indonesia had been able to control the fires, preventing massive fires that created haze affecting neighboring states. In 2015, the Indonesian government received protests from Singapore and Malaysia about haze that choked their territories.
