Riau (Greeners) – Current forest and land fires in Bengkalis district of Riau which blanketed Dumai city with smokes have burned down at least 1,200 hectares of peatland, said activist on Monday (25/02/2019).

The fires in Riau have been occurring since early 2019 and worsened by land burning practices.

Rico Kurniawan, executive director of Indonesian Forum for the Environment or WALHI Riau chapter, said that smokes have been polluting Dumai city for the past week, resulting to less than three kilometers of visibility and will harm residents of the city.

“We regret the slow response of Dumai administration for these smokes as it is happening for a week, but there are no actions from local government to its own residents,” said Kurniawan. “Currently, people are going with their activities, normally, with thick haze. Schools are not closed down and people are not being evacuated or warnings to get out of the house.”

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Furthermore, he said that the forest and land forests have been going on in Riau since 2019 due to hot weather in Dumai, Bengkalis district, Meranti and Rokan Hilir, which hotspots were located. The worst haze occurred in 11-13 February 2019.

“Since last year, BMKG [Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics agency) had announced of long dry season, so, that’s a warning system to local governments which areas often experienced forest and land fires, especially on peatland,” he said. “However, Riau government seemed to ignore this [warning] as forest and land fires have already hit 1200 hectares of areas, either in people or companies’ lands. WALHI underlined other reason for this forest and land fires is weak peat recovery.”

Meanwhile, Minister of Environment and Forestry, Siti Nurbaya, said that forest and land fires in Riau has different hotspots pattern which would still be spotted by March.

“So, Riau will always going to be like that, always by the end of February, it starts to get hot until March. Even forest and land fires happen in December 2018. It is most likely that hotspots will be increasing until May. However, what is important now is the mitigation concept, that is as fast as possible to put out the hotspots,” said Minister Siti in Jakarta.

Furthermore, she said that Riau is under Disaster Alert based on the governor’s letter because of the fires mostly happened in people’s lands.

“Fires in peats have been going since long time ago. Only under Jokowi administration, peats become one of the concerns and since three years ago, the intensity of peat fires have been drastically declining. We will continue to monitor through patrols, so, if there’s fires, it will be immediately put out,” she said.

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Head of National Mitigation Disaster agency (BNPB), Doni Monardo, citing the agency’s data that 99 percent of forest and land forests is because of human activities, and the remaining one percent is because of natural causes, which had happened in Riau.

The latest report from the agency stated 600 hotspots in Bengkalis of Riau which potentially lead to forest and land fires.

“In the future, BNPB will look for solution for this forest and land forests. Maybe in the future, people can be coordinated or educated by the armed forces, police, and local government, so they would not open land with burning because the state loss because of forest and land forests is massive, transportation mode, tourism and public health are affected,” said Monardo.

Reports by Dewi Purningsih

Jakarta (Greeners) – Recent forest fires in Indonesia is the result of a bad marriage between organized corporate crime and structured negligence from the government, blasted Greenpeace Indonesia.

The statement was released by forest campaigner of Greenpeace Indonesia Teguh Surya at a discussion “Southeast Asia’s Haze Problems: Integrating Local, National and Regional Approaches”, in Jakarta.

Teguh said lots of companies complained in the media that they suffered losses too with burned lands and acacia and other assets.

However, in reality, he had not seen any good intentions from business people to deal with this land and forest fires for the past 18 years.

“Even based on the audit conducted by UKP4 with REDD+ agency and Riau government in 2013-2014 revealed that companies have done little effort, as so was the government, said Teguh, in Jakarta, on Wednesday (28/10).

Meanwhile, structural negligence by government was through permit issuance to convert peatlands and dried them for two decades.

These permits were given even before Indonesia owned clear map on peatlands.

“We only have indicative maps. How is it possible to issue permits without any references,” he added.

After the 2014 Government Regulation on Peatlands Protection and Management was issued, only then that the government had instructed to map out peatlands areas within two years time. After two years, the map of protected area for peatlands ecosystem must be finalized.

“So, 21 million hectares of peatlands were managed or issued its permits to be converted then dried to be planted palm oil and timber concessions. There was no clear map for those years. Even after disaster occurred every year, there was never any comprehensive evaluation on those permits,” he said.

Secondly, he said that many civilians were arrested under claims “deliberately burned” or “accidentally burned”.

Teguh said that he was curious as lands owned by those allegedly and caught red handed were then given permits.

He cited a case in Nyaru Menteng where Head of Data Information and spokesman of National Agency for Disaster Management Sutopo Purwo Nugroho uploaded picture of burned lands planted with palm oil.

“From our analysis, there has been no good intention from government to solve this problem,” he said.

Report by Danny Kosasih

Jakarta (Greeners) – Thick smoke from forest and land fires continues to spread in Sumatra and Kalimantan. It is even resulted in decreasing air quality in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore.

Meteorological, Climatological, and Geophysics agency (BMKG) reported that Himawari satellite monitoring had spotted mild to moderate haze was blanketing Java Sea.

Thick smoke resulted from forest and land fires is declared by National Agency on Disaster Management (BNPB) as man made disaster.

Head of Data Information and spokesman for BNPB Sutopo Purwo Nugroho stated that 99 percent of those fires was deliberately.

“This is an extraordinary crime against humanity. It is not the time to point fingers but find the best solution as soon as possible. With this scale, it is highly impossible to put out fires in one to two weeks time. However, we are all in this together,” said Sutopo to Greeners, in Jakarta, on Saturday (24/10).

At least ten people were killed in Sumatra and Kalimantan as a result of these fires. Some of casualties died of burn injuries while putting out fires. And, some had severe respiratory problems heightened by thick smokes.

“Those ten people were not including seven hikers died in Lawu Mountain of Magetan, East Java, after being trapped in forest fires and burned on Oct. 18. Two hikers are still in critical condition. “These casualties are not included Lawu Mountain accident,” he said.

Sutopo added that smoke disaster had affected 503,874 people with respiratory issues in six povinces from July 1 to Oct. 23.

At least 80,263 people affected in Riau, 129,229 people in Jambi, 101,333 people in South Sumatera, 43, 477 people in West Kalimantan, 52,142 people in Central Kalimantan, and 97,430 people in South Kalimantan.

Furthermore, Sutopo said that more than 43 million people were affected by smoke. These data were only accounted for Sumatra and Kalimantan. The data analize smoke spread map with population map.

“It is possible that people affected more than as they usually don’t come to community health center (puskesmas) or hospital. They prefer to medicate themselves so there are no records of them,” he said.

Report by Danny Kosasih