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topic: Southeast Asian Haze
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2023 fires increase fivefold in Indonesia amid El Niño
- Nearly 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres, an area 15 times the size of Jakarta) burned in Indonesia between January and October 2023, according to environment and forest ministry data; El Niño and burning for new plantations contributed to this.
- 2023 was the worst fire season since 2019, when that year’s El Niño brought a prolonged dry season and fires so severe, they sent billowing smoke across Malaysia and Singapore.
- In the absence of local jobs, some people burn abandoned farmlands and turn them into new plantations as a way to make a living and survive.
In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- Wildfire poses significant health risks to Indonesians, particularly children under 5, who especially suffered the effects of the 2019 haze.
- Farmers have long used fire in cultivation, and the risks to health and environment have grown significantly as deforestation and drainage have made peatlands particularly susceptible to fire.
- In 2022, women from the Indonesian part of Borneo formed “the Power of Mama,” a unit to fight hazardous wildfires and their causes.
Indonesian children locked out of school as El Niño haze chokes parts of Sumatra & Kalimantan
- Poor air quality over several Indonesian cities and outlying rural areas has forced local authorities to cut class times or close schools altogether.
- Air pollution on Oct. 5 in one area of Palangkaraya far exceeded the level at which air quality is classified dangerous to human health.
- The government of Jambi province has closed schools until Oct. 7, after which it will review whether to reopen for in-person teaching.
Palm oil, pulpwood firms not doing enough to prevent peat fires, analysis shows
- More than 2 million hectares (5 million acres) of oil palm, pulpwood and other concessions across Indonesia are at high risk of being burned because of companies’ failure to restore the peat landscape, according to a new analysis.
- This represents more than half of the Switzerland-sized area of tropical peatland throughout Indonesia that’s considered a high fire risk.
- With many concession holders still not doing enough to restore the peat landscapes in their concessions, researchers question the effectiveness of government mandates and certification schemes in preventing peat fires.
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) credits its early fire detection system with helping member concessions achieve lower numbers of hotspots than noncertified concessions, but groups like Greenpeace dispute the findings.
Indonesian oil palm firm slapped with $61m fine for fires on its plantation
- Indonesia’s Supreme Court has upheld a $61 million fine against palm oil company PT Rafi Kamajaya Abadi for fires on its oil palm plantation in western Borneo.
- The fires burned an area spanning 2,560 hectares (6,326 acres), or more than seven times the size of New York City’s Central Park.
- To date, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry has filed lawsuits against 22 companies for fires on their concessions, 13 of which have been found liable and must pay fines after exhausting all avenues of appeal.
As dry season looms, Sumatra villagers hope their peat restoration pays off
- Community-led efforts to restore degraded peatlands in Indonesia’s Riau province could be put to the test in early 2023 as the dry season sets in.
- Riau is the perennial epicenter of the burning season on Sumatra Island, and is expected to have a more intense dry season after three consecutive years of wetter-than-usual conditions due to La Niña.
- A broad coalition of local governments, communities, researchers and NGOs have been working to restore peatlands that had been drained in preparation for planting, with the hope that restoring water levels will prevent burning.
- As part of the restoration programs, communities are also adapting their farming practices, learning to prepare the land without the use of fire, and picking crops that are suited for the wetter soil conditions.
Indonesia’s Supreme Court rules President Widodo not liable in 2015 fires
- Indonesia’s highest court has ruled President Joko Widodo not liable in the 2015 fires, overturning three previous court rulings that found him to be liable for the disaster.
- The plaintiffs, a group of citizens and environmental activists affected by the 2015 fires, have lambasted the court’s decision, saying it raises questions over the government’s seriousness in tackling the annual fire problem.
- The plaintiffs also questioned the process behind the ruling, saying they hadn’t been given the chance to refute new evidence presented by the government.
As dry season starts in Indonesia, risk of fires — and haze — looms
- There’s a degree of risk that Southeast Asia may see the return of transboundary haze this year from forest fires in Indonesia, according to a new report by a Singaporean think tank.
- The key driver of that risk is the currently high price of palm oil on the world market, which could pose an incentive for farmers in Indonesia, the world’s top producer of palm oil, to expand their plantations, including by clearing land with fire.
- In anticipation of the dry season, which starts in July, some local governments in Indonesia are putting in place policies to prevent fires, including sanctions for companies using fire to clear their concessions.
Indonesia’s new epicenter of forest fires shifts away from Sumatra and Borneo
- Indonesia, a country that suffers from recurring fires every year, saw an increase in land and forest fires this year, with flames burning an area twice the size of London.
- Two-thirds of the burned area was in the provinces of West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara, which until recently experienced much less burning than the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.
- Experts attribute the increase in fires in the two provinces to the lack of firefighting capacity at the local level and the extreme dry weather.
Indonesia eyes less severe fire season, but COVID-19 could turn it deadly
- This year’s forest fire season in Indonesia is expected to be less severe than in previous years, but the haze from the burning could still compound the coronavirus crisis in the country.
- Favorable weather conditions and ongoing efforts to restore peatlands point to a “relatively benign” fire season, and hence less risk of severe haze, a new report says.
- Even before the pandemic, haze from forest and peat fires was known to increase cases of respiratory infections fourfold in the hardest-hit areas; combined with COVID-19, haze this time around could stretch the country’s overwhelmed hospitals beyond breaking point.
- Indonesia has recently become the global epicenter of the disease, registering more daily cases than India and Brazil, with the country’s doctors’ association warning the health care system has “functionally collapsed.”
COVID-19 may worsen burning and haze as Indonesia enters dry season
- Reallocation of disaster preparedness funds for the COVID-19 pandemic could allow a flare-up of forest fires and haze as the dry season gets underway in Indonesia, with smog from Sumatra reported to have reached Southern Thailand.
- While the country is expected to see a milder dry season than last year, any haze episodes will exacerbate an already precarious public health situation as a result of the pandemic.
- Researchers in Singapore say Indonesian authorities are largely on the right track in preventing fires, which are typically set to clear land for plantations, but more needs to be done in terms of enforcement on the ground.
- They also suggest that small and medium plantation companies — rather than large companies or smallholder farmers — will have the most impact on how severe the fire and haze problem will be.
Forest fires in Indonesia set to add toxic haze to COVID-19 woes
- Forest fires have flared up in Indonesia, marking the start of the dry season and threatening to aggravate respiratory ailments amid the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.
- Haze from forest fires sickens hundreds of Indonesians annually, mostly on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo; many of them now suffer chronic respiratory problems that puts them at high risk of suffering acutely from COVID-19.
- Studies done in Italy have linked higher levels of air pollution to higher COVID-19 mortality rates, and experts in Indonesia fear that theory will play out in the country that already has the second-highest death rate from the pandemic in Asia.
- Social distancing measures imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus are already hampering fire prevention programs, and could do the same for firefighting efforts once the dry season intensifies.
As 2020 fire season nears, Indonesian president blasts officials for 2019
- President Joko Widodo has chided his top officials for failing to anticipate the severity of the land and forest fires that hit Indonesia last year, saying they must do better as the 2020 dry season approaches.
- The fires are set annually to clear land for planting, and there had been ample warning that an intense dry season and El Niño weather system would exacerbate the problem in 2019.
- The president threatened again to fire officials for failing to prevent or control fires in their jurisdictions this year, and quashed their excuses that last year’s burning wasn’t as bad as in other countries.
- A key weapon in the government’s fight against future fires is a program to restore degraded peatlands; but activists say the program is opaque and flawed, with little public accountability of the progress made.
Indonesia fires cost nation $5 billion this year: World Bank
- Land and forest fires in Indonesia cost the country $5.2 billion in damage and economic losses this year, equivalent to 0.5% of its economy, according to a new analysis from the World Bank.
- Half of the estimated economic loss came from the agriculture and environmental sectors, as fires damaged valuable estate crops and released significant greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, estimated at 708 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
- The actual economic loss could be higher as the World Bank hasn’t taken into account the impacts of the fires on the public health and on the image of Indonesia’s palm oil industry.
Our fires weren’t as bad as in the Amazon, Indonesian officials claim
- Indonesian officials say their handling of forest fires this year has been much better than in other places, including the Amazon.
- But while the claim of a smaller burned area than in the Amazon holds true, the Indonesian fires have churned out nearly double the greenhouse gas emissions as the burning in Brazil.
- Environmental activists also say the much-touted regulations and preventive measures credited with keeping the fires from getting much bigger were largely ineffective, given the scale of the burning.
- Officials say they plan to adopt technological solutions for the upcoming fire season, including cloud seeding and the use of drones for early detection of hotspots.
Indonesia fires emitted double the carbon of Amazon fires, research shows
- Forest fires that swept across Indonesia this year emitted nearly twice the amount of greenhouse gases as the fires that razed parts of the Brazilian Amazon, new research shows.
- The Indonesian fires pumped at least 708 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in the atmosphere, largely as a result of burning of carbon-rich peatlands.
- The fires were the most intense since 2015 and threaten to set back Indonesia’s commitments to reduce its carbon emissions and contribute to global efforts to slow climate change.
Photos: Peatland fires rage through Indonesia’s Sumatra Island
- Aerial images taken last month in the southern part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island show fires raging through peatlands and generating massive clouds of haze.
- The fires this year are the worst since 2015, exacerbated by an unusually intense dry season and an El Niño weather pattern.
- The fires are set deliberately to clear land for oil palm and pulpwood plantations, and the smoke they generate has sickened hundreds of thousands of people and spread as far as neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.
Area the size of Puerto Rico burned in Indonesia’s fire crisis
- A spike in fires in September has contributed to the razing of 8,578 square kilometers (3,304 square miles) of land across Indonesia this year, or an area the size of Puerto Rico.
- More areas are expected to continue burning through to the end of the year, but the fire season this year isn’t expected to be as bad as in 2015, when 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 square miles) of land was burned.
- The onset of rains has also reduced the incidence of transboundary haze that previously sparked protests from neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.
- Almost all the fires this year occurred on deforested land that had previously been burned, where the vegetation has not had sufficient time to regenerate after the last fires.
As wildfires roil Sumatra, some villages have abandoned the burning
- Devastating fires and haze in 2015, as well as the threat of arrest, have prompted some villages in Sumatra to end the tradition of burning the land for planting.
- The villages of Upang Ceria and Gelebak Dalam also been fire-free since then, even as large swaths of forest elsewhere in Sumatra continue to burn.
- Village officials have plans to develop ecotourism as another source of revenue, as well as restore mangroves and invest in agricultural equipment that makes the farmers’ work easier.
Indonesian enforcement questioned as fires flare up on the same concessions
- Indonesia says it plans to impose stricter punishment for plantation companies with recurring instances of fire on their concessions, including permanently revoking their permits.
- Several of the companies whose concessions have been burning this year were also at the heart of the 2015 fires.
- Activists say the fact that the problem is recurring on the same concessions highlights the government’s failure to adequately punish the companies.
- A Greenpeace report has found no meaningful action taken against palm oil companies guilty of burning since 2015, and inconsistent enforcement against pulpwood companies during that same period.
A newborn dies amid Indonesia fire crisis, as parents fear for their kids’ health
- A newborn child in Indonesia’s Riau province has become one of the latest fatalities of the haze blanketing large swaths of the region as a result of fires burning through Sumatra’s forests.
- Nearly 30,000 people in Riau alone have suffered from acute respiratory infections during this year’s fires, and nearly 310,000 have been affected by eye and skin irritation, dizziness and vomiting.
- Among those reporting worrying symptoms are pregnant women, one of whom said she’d miscarried five years earlier during a similar haze crisis.
- The fires burn nearly every year, emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases that have helped keep Indonesia among the top carbon polluters worldwide and spreading haze as far as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
Wildfires spread to planned site of new Indonesian capital
- Fires raging across Indonesia have flared up in an area of Borneo where the government recently announced would be the site of the nation’s new capital.
- The location had been chosen in part because it was believed to be at low risk from fires and other disasters.
- Haze from the fires has affected local communities as well as a nearby orangutan rescue and rehabilitation center.
- Authorities have arrested two farmers for setting fires on their land, but activists say they were doing so in a controlled manner and with the permission of local officials.
‘We’ve been negligent,’ Indonesia’s president says as fire crisis deepens
- Indonesia’s government has been negligent in anticipating and preparing for this year’s fire season, the country’s president says.
- The fires, set mostly to clear land for planting, have razed huge swaths of forest and generated toxic haze that has spread as far as Malaysia and Singapore.
- The president’s acknowledgement of the government’s lack of preparation comes in the wake of his own ministers apportioning blame for the fires to other parties.
- Activists say the government has little moral standing to go after the companies that have set their concessions ablaze, noting that the government itself has refused to take responsibility for failing to do enough to tackle similar fires in 2015.
Indonesian minister draws fire for denial of transboundary haze problem
- Indonesia’s environment minister continues to deny that fires in the country are sending toxic haze to neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.
- An environmental activist warns that this stance, which goes against the data presented by Malaysia, risks undermining Indonesia’s credibility.
- The haze is an annual irritant in diplomatic ties between Indonesia and its neighbors, with much of the burning taking place to clear land for oil palm and pulpwood plantations.
- Malaysia has offered to help Indonesia fight the fires, which have sickened tens of thousands of people in Sumatra and Borneo, threatened an elephant reserve, and churned more than 100 millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Photos: Forest fires rage on Sumatra oil palm concessions
- As Indonesia’s annual fire season gets underway, swaths of carbon-rich peat forests are being razed, and the subsequent toxic smoke has blanketed parts of Jambi province on the island of Sumatra.
- Dozens of hotspots have been detected on farmland, oi palm concessions, and even inside a protected peat forest in the province, according to the local disaster management agency.
- Mongabay visited one of the burning concessions, where minimally equipped workers are fighting to put out fires that have been burning for days without end.
- The workers deny that the oil palm company set the fire on the concession, claiming it started in a neighboring village. In 2015, three company employees were charged with setting fires on the same concession, though none were ever convicted.
Diplomatic row heats up as haze from Indonesian fires threatens Malaysia
- The number of fire hotspots in Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra has increased nearly sevenfold in a four-day period in early September.
- The surge has prompted calls from Malaysia, which has historically been affected by haze from fires in Indonesia, for its Southeast Asian neighbor to get the burning under control.
- The Indonesian government has refuted complaints that the recent increase in hotspots has resulted in transboundary haze.
- Indonesia faces what could be the worst fire season since 2015, fanned by an El Niño weather pattern.
Haze from fires, Indonesia’s national ‘embarrassment,’ are back
- Indonesia is experiencing its worst annual fire season since 2015, with the cross-border spread of haze once again threatening to spark a diplomatic row with neighbors Malaysia and Singapore.
- The government has acknowledged that measures adopted in the wake of the 2015 fires to prevent a repeat of that disaster may have fallen short, including efforts to restore drained peatlands and drill wells to provide water for firefighters.
- President Joko Widodo, scheduled to visit Malaysia and Singapore later this week, says he feels embarrassed by the return of the fires and haze, and has ordered the firing of officials found to have failed to tackle the problem.
- At the local level, however, governors of the affected provinces appear to be taking the matter lightly: saying the haze isn’t at a worrying level, offering a reward for shamans who can summon rain, and proposing questionable theories about the causes of the fires.
Top court holds Indonesian government liable over 2015 forest fires
- Indonesia’s Supreme Court has ordered that the government carry out measures to mitigate forest fires in the country, following a citizen lawsuit filed in the wake of devastating blazes in 2015.
- The decision upholds earlier rulings by lower courts, but the government says it will still challenge it, claiming that the circumstances that led to the 2015 fires were due to mismanagement by previous administrations.
- The plaintiffs in the lawsuit say they just want the government to implement common-sense measures to prevent the fires from recurring, and which existing laws already require it to carry out.
- The fire season is already underway again this year, as companies and smallholder farmers set forests ablaze in preparation for planting.
Video: Meet Indonesia’s go-to expert witness against haze-causing plantation firms
- Bambang Hero Sahajaro is the Indonesian government’s chief expert witness against plantation firms accused of causing wildfires.
- Last year, Bambang was sued by a company whose practices he testified against in court. The lawsuit against him was eventually thrown out, though observers say it is part of a trend of companies fighting back against their prosecution by trying to silence environmental defenders.
- “I won’t back off, not even one step, because there are already many cases waiting for me,” he told Mongabay. “I will keep fighting for the people’s constitutional right to a healthy environment.”
Palm oil, logging firms the usual suspects as Indonesia fires flare anew
- Fires have flared up once again on concessions held by palm oil and logging companies in Riau province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
- For many of the companies involved, this isn’t the first time fires have sprung up on their land, prompting activists to question the government’s ability to enforce its own regulations against slash-and-burn forest clearing.
- Much of the affected area is peat forest, some of it being developed in violation of a ban on exploiting deep peatland, whose burning releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
- A failure by the government to collect on fines levied against the few companies prosecuted for setting fires on their concessions means there’s little deterrent effect for other companies that see slash-and-burn as the cheapest way to raze forests for plantations.
Indonesia’s threat to exit Paris accord over palm oil seen as cynical ploy
- A top Indonesian minister says the country may consider pulling out of the Paris climate agreement in retaliation for a European policy to phase out palm oil from biofuels by 2030.
- Luhut Pandjaitan, the coordinating minister for maritime affairs, says Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, can follow in the footsteps of the United States, which has declared its withdrawal from the climate pact, and Brazil, which is considering doing the same.
- The threat is the latest escalation in a diplomatic spat that has also seen Indonesia and Malaysia, the No. 2 palm oil producer, threaten retaliatory trade measures against the European Union.
- The EU says its policy is driven by growing consumer concerns about the sustainability of palm oil, which in Indonesia is often grown on plantations for which vast swaths of rainforest have had to be cleared.
Hazy figures cloud Indonesia’s peat restoration as fire season looms
- An El Niño weather system in the early months of 2019 could see forest fires flare up once again in Indonesia.
- The government rolled out a slate of measures following disastrous fires in 2015, centering on the restoration of degraded peatlands that had been rendered highly combustible by draining for agriculture.
- While the number and extent of fires since then have declined significantly, activists attribute this more to milder weather in the intervening years, rather than the government’s peatland management and restoration measures.
- Activists have also questioned figures that suggest the target of restoring 24,000 square kilometers (9,300 square miles) of peatland by the end of 2020 has been almost achieved, saying there’s little transparency about the bulk of the required restoration, being carried out by pulpwood and plantation companies.
Fires and haze return to Indonesia as peat protection bid falls short
- Fires on peatlands on Indonesia’s Borneo and Sumatra islands have flared up again this year after relatively fire-free dry seasons in 2016 and 2017.
- The government has enacted wide-ranging policies to restore peatland following the disastrous fires of 2015 that razed an area four times the size of Grand Canyon National Park.
- However, the fires this year have sprung up in regions that have been prioritized for peat restoration, suggesting the government’s policies have had little impact.
- Officials and activists are also split over who to blame for the fires, with the government citing smallholder farmers, and environmentalists pointing to large plantation companies.
Forest fires threaten Asian Games as hotspots flare up in Sumatra
- Fires have started to flare up in Indonesia’s South Sumatra province, which will co-host thousands of athletes, officials and visitors for the Asian Games, the continent’s biggest sporting event, later this month.
- Officials are worried about a repeat of the devastating 2015 fires that burned up an area three times the size of the state of Delaware, and that generated haze that sickened half a million people.
- After relatively mild fire seasons in 2016 and 2017, thanks to longer rainy spells, dry conditions are expected to intensify this year, at least through September, raising the risk of more fires and possibly haze.
Indonesia enlists plantation companies to ensure haze-free Asian Games
- Organizers of the Asian Games in August are wary of the major sporting event being hit by haze from brush and peat fires, an annual occurrence in Sumatra, where one of the host cities is located.
- The government has called on pulpwood and oil palm companies with concessions in fire-prone areas to take steps to restore degraded peatlands and prevent fires during this year’s dry season, which runs from June through September.
- The companies are legally obliged to restore areas of deep peat, and some are fast-tracking their other fire-prevention programs in light of the Asian Games.
Pulp and paper giant sues Indonesian government over peat protection obligation
- A company owned by the billionaire Tanoto family of Indonesia is seeking to overturn a government decision to invalidate its plans to operate on peatlands.
- The parties are clashing over new rules issued by the Indonesian government in the wake of the 2015 fire and haze crisis.
- The government recently rezoned some areas within the company’s concession for conservation, but the company argues it should be allowed to keep operating on them for now.
How unhealthy is the haze from Indonesia’s annual peat fires?
- Indonesia’s vast peat swamp zones have been widely drained and dried for agriculture, rendering them highly flammable, and they often burn on a massive scale, blanketing the country and its neighbors in smoke.
- A recent survey on perceptions of the fires showed that while different groups have varying levels of concern about forest loss or carbon emissions, everyone agrees that protecting public health is a top priority.
- However, the first step to solving a problem is to agree on how critical the issue is.
The Palm Oil Fiefdom
- This is the first installment of Indonesia for Sale, an in-depth series on the corruption behind Indonesia’s deforestation and land rights crisis.
- Indonesia for Sale is a collaboration between Mongabay and The Gecko Project, an investigative reporting initiative established by UK-based nonprofit Earthsight.
- This article is the product of nine months’ reporting across the Southeast Asian country, interviewing fixers, middlemen, lawyers and companies involved in land deals, and those most affected by them.
These 3 companies owe Indonesia millions of dollars for damaging the environment. Why haven’t they paid?
- The Indonesian government has been trying to collect penalties from three companies found guilty of damaging the environment.
- One of the companies is PT Kallista Alam, an oil palm plantation firm convicted of cut-and-burning rainforest in the Leuser Ecosystem.
- Another is PT Merbau Pelalawan Lestari, a timber plantation firm that was ordered to pay more than a billion dollars for illegal logging.
- The government plans to establish a task force for the express purpose of collecting the penalties.
Land-swap rule among Indonesian President Jokowi’s latest peat reforms
- To prevent another round of devastating wildfires, Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s administration has issued a series of policies governing the management of peatlands — carbon-rich swamps that have been widely drained and dried by the nation’s agribusinesses, rendering them highly flammable.
- The administration hopes a new land-swap scheme will help it claw back peat from big oil palm and timber planters, providing a means to supply the firms with additional land elsewhere in the country.
- Business associations complain about the new policy, saying it’s not feasible for a company in Sumatra to move its operations all the way to Papua.
- Environmental pressure groups, meanwhile, call the regulation an unfair boon for large firms, providing a rapacious industry with more land than the vast amounts it already controls.
First real test for Jokowi on haze as annual fires return to Indonesia
- Land and forest fires have broken out in pockets of Indonesia since mid-July.
- Last year the country caught a break, when a longer-than-normal wet season brought on by La Niña helped mitigate the fire threat.
- This year, hotspots have started appearing in regions with no history of major land and forest fires, like East Nusa Tenggara and Aceh.
- The government has responded by declaring an emergency status as well as deploying firefighters.
Mounting outcry over Indonesian palm oil bill as legislators press on
- The bill cements the right of oil palm planters to operate on peat soil, at a time when President Joko Widodo is trying to enforce new peat protections to stop another outbreak of devastating fires and haze.
- The bill has also been criticized for outlining a variety of tax breaks and duty relief schemes for palm oil investors, although those provisions have been dialed back — but not completely eliminated — in the latest draft.
- The bill’s main champion in the House of Representatives is the Golkar Party’s Firman Soebagyo. He says it will help farmers and protect Indonesian palm oil from foreign intervention.
- Responding to mounting public criticism, some cabinet members recently asked the House to abandon the bill, but Soebagyo, who is leading the deliberations, says they will continue.
Indonesia blocks major artery in haze-causing Mega Rice canal network
- The Ministry of Public Works and Housing is narrowing and installing dams in one of the largest canals built as part of the failed Mega Rice Project in the mid-1990s.
- Authorities are negotiating with local residents who rely on some of the canals for transportation through the peat swamps of Central Kalimantan.
- Officials say that to really solve the problem of dried out and flammable peat, not just the largest canals but the smaller ones too will have to be blocked.
Indonesia’s plantation lobby challenges environmental law
- The Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI) and the Indonesian Association of Forestry Concessionaires (APHI) lodged a judicial review with the Constitutional Court last month.
- They want the court to edit the 1999 Forestry Law and the 2009 Environment Law so that companies are not strictly liable for fires that occur in their concessions.
- They also want to the court to extend the ban on using fire to clear land to small farmers.
Green groups want paper giant to stop using drained peat in Indonesia
- Indonesia’s vast peat swamp zones have been widely drained and dried for agriculture. The practice underlies the devastating annual fires that in 2015 burned an area the size of Vermont and sickened half a million people.
- Asia Pulp & Paper is Indonesia’s largest paper company. About a quarter of its vast holdings consist of peat.
- The government has banned any new development on peatlands. NGOs want the company to go farther, rewetting and restoring all of the peat in its concessions, even that which has already been planted with acacia.
HSBC financing tied to deforestation, rights violations for palm oil in Indonesia
- HSBC has helped several palm oil companies accused of community rights violations and illegal deforestation pull together billions in credit and bonds, according to research by Greenpeace.
- The bank has policies that require its customers to achieve RSPO certification by 2018 and prohibiting the bank from ‘knowingly’ engaging with companies that don’t respect sustainability laws and regulations.
- Greenpeace contends that HSBC, as one of the world’s largest banks, should commit to a ‘No deforestation, no peat, no exploitation’ policy and should hold its customers accountable to the same standard.
Hectare by hectare, an indigenous man reforested a jungle in Indonesia’s burned-out heartland
- In 1998, a Dayak Ngaju man named Januminro started buying up and reforesting degraded land not far from Palangkaraya, the capital of Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province.
- Today the forest spans 18 hectares and is home to orangutans, sun bears and other endangered species.
- Januminro uses funds from an adopt-a-tree program to operate a volunteer firefighting team. He has big plans to expand the forest.
Indonesia seeks foreign funds to aid peat restoration drive
- The head of Indonesia’s peat restoration agency said corporate social responsibility and donor funds would not be enough to meet the country’s target.
- Indonesia’s finance ministry is preparing a reform package to provide incentives to invest in peat rehabilitation.
- The environment ministry has moved to issue five timber companies with administrative sanctions for complicity in wildfires burning on their concessions.
- Three companies had their licenses altogether revoked; land from two of those concessions will be converted into a buffer zone for Tesso Nilo National Park.
SE Asian governments dismiss finding that 2015 haze killed 100,300
- On Monday, researchers from Harvard and Columbia universities reported that 100,300 people in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are likely to have died prematurely from haze produced by last year’s devastating agricultural fires in Indonesia.
- Government officials from the three countries cast doubt on the findings.
- One of the study’s authors suggested the figure was actually conservative, as it only accounted for adults and for deaths that could occur within one year of exposure to the haze.
Pulp and paper supplier denies draining peat on island near Singapore
- Haze-causing fires are continuing to burn in Indonesia, especially in West Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo.
- The CEO of PT RAPP, a subsidiary of Indonesia’s second-largest pulp and paper company, said the canals his firm was accused of digging recently in order to drain peat soil for planting were actually meant to serve as reservoirs to aid firefighting in the burned-out concession.
- Indonesia’s peatland restoration agency is investigating the company’s activities.
Indonesian government to investigate Korean palm oil giant over burning in Papua
- The Indonesian environment ministry said they were sending a team to look into Korindo’s operations in Papua.
- A Korindo spokesperson denied that the company had burned land intentionally, suggesting that the fires on its land were the government’s fault, not the company’s.
- Environmental campaigners are touring Korea this week to raise awareness about Korindo’s activities in Papua.
No fire, no food: tribe clings to slash-and-burn amid haze crackdown
- Indonesia’s vast peat swamp zones have been widely drained and dried for agriculture and made highly flammable. In the dry season they burn uncontrollably when farmers and companies use fire to clear land.
- Last year’s fires sent toxic haze billowing across Southeast Asia, polluting the air above Singapore, Malaysia and other countries. They sickened half a million people in Indonesia and emitted more carbon than the entire EU during the same period.
- To prevent another crisis, President Joko Widodo has ordered a law enforcement crackdown on illegal burning, and already the police have arrested hundreds of people.
- Indigenous tribes who have relied on slash-and-burn for centuries, however, say that they need to be allowed to keep burning, and that they may face a food crisis if they cannot.
Another Indonesian court convicts a company of causing fires
- In December 2015, plantation company PT Bumi Mekar Hijau was acquitted in a civil suit the government had filed against it for letting fires ravage its land in 2014.
- Now, an appeals court has reversed that decision, ordering the company to pay $6 million in compensation.
- Environmentalists wished the company had been made to pay a higher penalty, given that the government was asking for more than $600 million. The 2015 Southeast Asian haze crisis cost Indonesia $16 billion, according to the World Bank.
Indonesian police arrest hundreds in connection to burning land
- Indonesia’s top cop on Thursday said the police had arrested 454 individuals over the fires now spreading in Sumatra and Kalimantan.
- The environment minister called on police to “investigate thoroughly” for any links to companies and local government officials.
- Local authorities in some haze-hit areas were assembling makeshift shelters as a precautionary measure to care for people with health problems.
Indonesia’s peat restoration chief calls for protection of all peat domes
The Indonesian agency set up to prevent a recurrence of last year’s devastating forest and peatland fires is calling for all peat domes in the country to be designated as protected areas. Indonesian law already prohibits development on deep peatlands, where the carbon-rich peat soil can extend for many meters below the surface. But the country’s vague peat […]
15 fire-linked firms escape prosecution in Indonesia’s Riau
- The police in Riau, Indonesia’s top palm oil-producing province and one of the hardest-hit by last year’s disastrous forest and peatland fires, closed cases against 15 plantation firms that the environment ministry had linked to the burning.
- Luhut Pandjaitan, who on Thursday was replaced as the country’s chief security minister, had expressed concern about the decision not to bring charges against the companies.
- In East Kalimantan, the head of a local policy implementation unit has also complained that the authorities are not moving quickly enough to prosecute errant plantation firms.
Indonesia’s palm oil permit moratorium to last five years
- Indonesia’s chief economics minister made the announcement after a meeting between ministers last week.
- The moratorium will take the form of a presidential instruction to be issued in the near future, he said.
- The forestry ministry has already taken steps to follow up on the moratorium announcement.
What are South Sumatrans doing to prevent another haze crisis?
- Residents are still digging canals to drain peatlands, which dries out the soil and makes it prone to burning in the dry season.
- Villagers near pulp and paper supplier PT Bumi Mekar Hijau’s concession, much of which burned last year, say they are upset with the company.
- A small number of residents have been enlisted to serve as part of a Fire Care Community Group to patrol the area, but a local official says it needs to be expanded.
Indonesia’s forestry ministry follows through on palm oil permit freeze
- In April, President Jokowi declared a moratorium on new oil palm and coal mining permits.
- Announcing the moratorium is one thing, but seeing it through in decentralized Indonesia is quite another.
- The top brass of the forestry ministry, at least, appears to be in Jokowi’s corner.
Singapore, Indonesia jostle over anti-haze measures
- The Indonesian environment minister said she was reviewing all bilateral collaborations with Singapore and that some would likely be terminated.
- Local governments in the archipelago have been instructed to hold off on any joint programs with Singapore for now.
- Jakarta has protested Singapore’s contention that it reserves the right to fine companies that pollute its air, wherever the firm is located.
Malaysian palm oil giant IOI sues RSPO over suspension
- The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil suspended IOI Group’s sustainability certification in March. Now the company has filed a lawsuit against the association in Zurich, the seat of the RSPO.
- The company characterized the move as a “painful” decision given its “great commitment and attachment” to the RSPO, but maintained that it had been “unfairly affected” by the suspension.
- A leaked memo written by the RSPO’s secretary general reveals the company told him it “has done no wrong” and “prefers if this legal action is kept low profile.”
How effective will Indonesia’s palm oil permit freeze really be?
- Last month, Indonesian president Joko Widodo took a major step toward preventing a repeat of 2015’s fire and haze crisis when he declared a moratorium on new oil palm and mining permits.
- It appears, though, that the licensing freeze will not be passed into law, prompting concerns over the penalties that can be applied to violators.
- A recent Greenpeace study has found 1,404 oil palm concessions the NGO says need to be reviewed because they contravene the the 2011 forestry moratorium brought in under similar terms by Widodo’s predecessor.
Haze returns to Kuala Lumpur – but not because of Indonesian fires
- Malaysians are experiencing a damaging heatwave and drought.
- Indonesia’s Sumatra saw a spike in hotspots last week, but the number has dropped in recent days.
- Singapore issued notices to six more companies under its Transboundary Haze Law.
Grim forecast for paper giant’s wood supply raises deforestation fears
- Asia Pulp & Paper spent decades eating through Indonesia’s vast rainforests. Then in 2013, it promised to stop logging natural forests and rely on plantation timber exclusively.
- The company’s huge new mill in Sumatra, though, will require vast quantities of wood when it starts operating this year.
- A new NGO report suggests the company will have to resume deforestation or risk shattering financial losses. APP has dismissed those concerns, promising to import wood chips if needed.
Emergency declared as fires reappear in Sumatra
- A state of emergency has been declared in six areas of Riau province where fires are flaring.
- The fires are nowhere near as bad as they were last year, but the emergency status will activate additional resources for fighting them.
- Smoke from the fires has not drifted into Singapore or Malaysia because the winds are blowing in the other direction.
$1m for devising best way to map Indonesia’s peatlands
- Bad maps have undermined Indonesia’s development for a long time.
- For one, they have made it tough to fight the annual forest and peatland fires.
- Now, the government wants to establish a national standard for mapping the country’s peat. It will do so through a competition, the Indonesian Peat Prize.
Indonesia’s peat peninsula being drained into oblivion, study finds
- The practices of agribusiness are causing the Kampar Peninsula to sink below flooding levels, according to a new report by the consultancy Deltares.
- 43.4% of the peatlands on the carbon-rich peninsula have been drained and converted to acacia plantations, mainly by APRIL, and also by Asia Pulp & Paper.
- APRIL disputes the notion that its practices aren’t sustainable, arguing that it has worked hard to protect the remaining forest there.
How can banks spur the palm oil industry toward sustainability?
- Banks are starting to come up with ways to encourage sustainability in the palm oil sector, whose unbridled expansion is fueling deforestation and rights abuses across the world.
- Still, the nascent green finance industry faces a number of obstacles as it seeks to expand its influence.
- These include a lack of transparency with regard to company ownership, misguided valuations of palm oil enterprises, and more.
Indonesia seeks re-do on court decision absolving company for haze-causing fire
- A district court in South Sumatra recently rejected the government’s lawsuit against PT Bumi Mekar Hijau, an Asia Pulp & Paper supplier accused of causing peat fires.
- The government will appeal the ruling. Siti Nurbaya, the environment minister, plans to personally oversee the case as it moves forward.
- The case is important to the ministry, which hopes a victory against BMH will set the tone for its campaign to prosecute companies accused of burning.
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