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.
