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A third of all Indonesian forest fires occurring on palm company lands

Indonesia's firefighters on frontline of Borneo's forest blazes. Photo:Reuters

 

A third of all Indonesian forest fires occurring on palm company lands

 

By Patryk Krych | The World Daily | OCTOBER 22nd 2020

 

According to the environmental group Greenpeace, over the course of the past five years there’s been a change in Indonesia. Forested areas that match the size of the Netherlands had been burned down over those years, through the occurrence of rising temperatures and drier conditions.

What Greenpeace had found via analysis was that 30% of all the fires burning in Indonesia were scorching through lands of palm oil and pulpwood, harming not only the environments but also the country’s fragile industry and economy. They added that there have been no sanctions given to the ten palm oil companies with the largest scorched lands.

The analysis that Greenpeace performed was primarily of the burned Indonesian lands, spanning across 2015 to 2019. What the data revealed to them was that about 10.8 million acres of forest were scorched throughout this time, and that a lot of this is the fault of the companies that own the land and don’t take the necessary precautions or actions against these fires.

“Year after year they (companies) have broken the law by allowing forests to go up in flames,” said the head of the Greenpeace South-East Asia forest campaign, Kiki Taufik.

There is also sufficient evidence provided by Greenpeace proving that the links between major Indonesian forest fires and air pollution can worsen the already terrible effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. Thus, some of the blame for worsening respiratory health and deaths could be directed at the companies that hold some accountability over the fires.

Over the past four decades, forest fires had been becoming a more common occurrence – this has caused lasting effects on the country’s air pollution levels, general human health, biodiversity and environmental wellbeing, as well as growing economical backlash.

What’s been made clear is that the Indonesian government has severely underestimated the negative human health effects currently present in the many smoke-affected areas. The country’s environmental minister refused a request for comments, and has said nothing on the crisis thus far.

Back in February, the country’s president Joko Widodo had ordered that officials seek a way to put an end to the yearly fire season, though it’s been made clear now that with so much of the fault potentially lying with palm companies, there may be little that can be done at present.

The situation could be said to have worsened since the new Indonesian “job creation” legislation had been implemented into law, and thus sparked a series of countrywide protests. The legislation received severe criticism since its creation, both by workers and by environmental officials who believe that the bill will hold negative impacts against the country’s forests, potentially opening up a route for greater deforestation industry.

“We see the bill eases rules and regulations for palm plantation companies that have operated illegally to control the land,” said Wahyu Perdana, campaign manager at the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI). “The government gives them amnesty. It is in contrast with the previous bill, which imposed criminal sanctions on them or the land was simply confiscated (for flouting forest laws).”

The Indonesian forests are the third biggest after the Amazon rainforest, and the Congo. It is a vastly important resource that critics of the labour law say now has the heightened potential to be severely and illegally exploited as a result. Part of this would mean lowering the minimum forestry area law, which mandates that each of the Indonesian islands requires at least a minimum of 30% forest coverage.

The government claimed that the job creation law was implemented in order to help raise both competitiveness and ease of investment, thus creating more jobs to boost the economy during these trying times of COVID-19 outbreak.

Greenpeace still hold the belief that companies ought to be held more responsible for the fires that burn through their territories – their responsibility. A spokeswoman from Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), which resides under the conglomerate Sinar Mas Group; one of the most major pulp and paper industries in all of Indonesia, has stated that $150 million has already been invested into a fire management system for the forests. Other officials from the Sinar Mas Group have refused immediate comment.

 

By Patryk Krych | © The World Daily 2020