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Time has come for haze litigation in Indonesia
If a company does not accept being sued for starting a fire, on the grounds that there are many other companies that commit the same pollution, it can drag along other companies to share liability in court.
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Murky ride: A motorcyclist braves thick smog from forest fires on Oct. 7, 2023 as he rides along Jl. Pendidikan in Jakabaring, a district in South Sumatra’s provincial capital Palembang.
(Antara/Nova Wahyudi)
October is usually the transition season from the dry season to the rainy. However, this year’s October feels like forest fires and haze "season" in Indonesia.
The forest and land fire monitoring system (Sipongi) by the Environment and Forestry Ministry shows 267,000 hectares of land and forest were burned this month alone.
Sumatra and Kalimantan experienced such severe haze the air quality was a toxic level to breathe. The haze crossed the border and affected Singapore and Malaysia, prompting them to send warnings to Indonesia.
The haze is hazardous. Research by Harvard on Indonesian forest and land fires throughout 2015 showed that there was a risk of more than 100,000 premature deaths, a reduction in life expectancy, for those exposed to the haze. This is a severe threat to public health and the economy.
Since 2012, the Indonesian government, through the Environment and Forestry Ministry, has filed many lawsuits against companies whose land was burned. They won up to Rp 20 trillion (US$1.33 billion) in compensation. However, only around Rp 500 billion could be executed.
Interestingly, none of these lawsuits were filed because of losses due to the haze. All of them were based on land pollution of forests and land areas, including forest fires. Even the biggest case, with Rp 16.2 trillion in compensation, was from illegal logging.
From a legal perspective, this might be understandable because of the difficulty in proving causation of haze. It is almost impossible to prove that someone is sick due to inhaling haze originating from one particular company, if at the same time there are dozens of other companies with burned land contributing to the haze.
