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View all search resultsExperts warn government against complacency in tackling forest fires
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Burned down – An aerial picture shows land fires in Batu Panjang, Rupat district, Bengkalis regency. The burned down areas are local people-owned land, which borders with concession areas belonging to companies with industrial forest permits. (Courtesy of the Riau Land and Forest Fire Post’s air task force/-)
I
ndonesia may have just averted another major land and forest fire disaster this year, but experts have said there were many things to be done to keep the environmental disaster at bay.
The country was still vulnerable to the possibility of a massive forest fire if the government failed to address issues such as permit misuse in forest areas, Greenpeace Indonesia head Leonard Simanjuntak said recently.
Poor land management would pave the way for illegal exploitation of land, encouraging the locals to use the slash and burn method to clear it.
Leonard argued that future danger was still looming large due to the shorter El Niño weather cycle, which could cause land to dry out more quickly, making it easier for fire to spread.
It is not impossible that Indonesia could face forest and land fires as disastrous as those that took place in 2015, he said.
Two years ago, forest and land fires mostly taking place in Sumatra and Kalimantan caused the deaths of 24 people and around half a million cases of acute respiratory infection.
The fires produced a haze that not only affected regions in Indonesia, but also spread through neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, and cost around US$16.1 billion in water resource damage, health expenses, ecosystem restoration and vegetation destruction.
