Category: INDONESIA

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Fighting fires on Indonesia’s peatlands

Fighting fires on Indonesia’s peatlands

22 May 2018

The United Nations has proclaimed May 22 the International Day for Biological Diversity to increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues. As one of the world’s most valuable ecosystems, peatlands support diverse species, including orangutans. Yet until recently, peatlands were drained and set ablaze for agriculture, producing an ecological catastrophe that sparked the need for change.

It’s now been three years since massive fires ravaged Indonesia in one of the worst environmental disasters of our century.

The blazes in 2015 scorched 2.6 million hectares across the archipelago, and produced toxic haze that blanketed neighboring countries Singapore and Malaysia. Thousands fell ill, and the Indonesian government suffered $16 billion in economic losses – more than double the sum spent on rebuilding Aceh after the 2004 tsunami, according to the World Bank.

What ignited this catastrophe? More importantly, what is being done to prevent it from reoccurring?

Community champions

Beads of sweat trickled down Udeng’s face as he hauled a heavy hose across the field during a practice drill with his fellow firefighters.

The 45-year-old father of four is from Tumbang Nusa, a village located in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan Province on Borneo that was an epicenter of the 2015 disaster.

“The fires were very bad,” he said. “I’m here to do my part to make sure they don’t happen again.” At the time, Udeng’s kids fell ill with asthma and his wife evacuated them to a neighboring village for almost a month because their home became inhospitable.

Spurred to action, Udeng joined Indonesia’s network of district-level volunteer firefighting brigades, known as “Masyarakat Peduli Api (MPA)”, which are formed by local village heads. Although Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry established a Forest Fire Brigade at the national level called the “Manggala Agni (MA)”, its capacity is frequently overextended given its vast mandate. This makes the volunteers invaluable. Yet many of them lack proper training and equipment given the informal nature of their units.

To remedy this, in May, intensive training was conducted for 66 volunteer firefighters from six of Central Kalimantan’s most fire-prone villages under the UN Environment project “Generating Anticipatory Measures for Better Utilization of Tropical Peatlands (GAMBUT)”, which is funded by USAID and operated by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).

The training was facilitated by highly experienced South African firefighters from the Working on Fire Program who first came to Indonesia in 2015 to assist with the disaster, and have since been collaborating with the UN Environment project as a key partner to increase knowledge exchange and sharing between the two Southern Hemisphere countries.

“Teaching the technical skills is the easy part,” said Trevor Wilson, Executive Director of Working on Fire. “The biggest challenge is changing the way local people think about fire, so the course stresses 80 per cent fire prevention and only 20 per cent fire suppression, because the best fires are the ones that never happen.”

Peat as tinderboxes

For decades, Indonesia’s smallholder farmers have been using fire to clear land for crops to produce commodities like palm oil, of which Indonesia is now the world’s biggest producer. But intentional fires often spiral out of control, particularly during the annual dry season.

Particularly problematic is when these fires ignite on peatland. Peat is comprised of 90 per cent water and 10 per cent organic matter (decaying plants underwater). Peat fires can thus smolder underground for weeks. They are nearly impossible to put out without heavy rains.

“Peatlands need to remain underwater. If you drain them, you are left with a pile of organic materials like leaves and branches, which are extremely flammable,” said Johan Kieft, Lead Technical Advisor for the UN-REDD Programme in Indonesia, an initiative by UN Environment, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to support developing countries in their efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

Of the 2.6 million hectares that burned between June-October 2015, 33 per cent occurred on peatlands. When the wildfires broke out, they were exacerbated by an El Niño year that caused an unusually severe dry spell. In normal circumstances, the wildfires would have abated after a few weeks, but in 2015, they raged for months.

Peat and climate change

After the 2015 crisis put a global spotlight on peatlands, Indonesia responded by banning the use of fire in clearing peatlands, establishing a national Peatlands Restoration Agency (BRG), as well as pledging to restore 2 million hectares of peatlands by 2020.

The UN-REDD Programme is working closely with Indonesia to raise awareness about peatlands, given that the country is home to half of the world’s tropical peatlands.

Peat is one of nature’s most effective ways of taking carbon out of the atmosphere and stocking it underground, making it crucial to the fight against climate change. On the flip side, when drained and set ablaze, they can release 10 times more carbon than forest fires.

“By preserving peat, we preserve precious carbon because peat is the largest terrestrial carbon stock in the world,” said Kieft.

For more information contact Leona Liu leona.liu@un.org +66 22882186

Source: https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/fighting-fires-indonesias-peatlands

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Singapore set for third straight haze-free year

Singapore set for third straight haze-free year

PUBLISHED MAY 19, 2018, 5:00 AM SGT

Indonesian minister says there won’t be a repeat of 2015 crisis in 2018, thanks to steps taken

Audrey Tan Environment Correspondent Luke Anthony Tan

Singapore looks set to see a third straight year with no haze, due in part to Indonesia’s sustained efforts at curbing fires and preventing their spread.

Indonesia’s Minister of National Development Planning Bambang Brodjonegoro said yesterday that the 2015 haze crisis would not repeat itself this year.

“In the last few years, including this year, we did not have the haze that happened in 2015,” he said, adding that forestry and peatland management plans have already been implemented. Dr Bambang was speaking at the fifth Singapore Dialogue on Sustainable World Resources held at the Grand Hyatt Singapore hotel. The event was organised by think-tank Singapore Institute of International Affairs.

His statement echoes similar promises made by other Indonesian officials last year and in 2016.

The haze in Singapore is largely caused by winds blowing smoke from forest fires in Indonesia. Many of Indonesia’s pulpwood and oil palm plantations are located on carbon-rich peatlands. When these areas are drained of water for planting, the risk of fire increases.

In 2015, Indonesia’s dry season coincided with the El Nino weather phenomenon, which is linked to warmer and drier weather in this part of the world.

The bad weather exacerbated the forest fires typical of the country’s agro-forestry landscape, and caused the region to suffer the worst haze crisis on record.

Since then, Indonesia has taken significant steps to reduce the occurrence of fires, said Dr Nirarta Samadhi, country director of research organisation World Resources Institute Indonesia.

Speaking to the media on the sidelines of yesterday’s event, Dr Samadhi pointed to three ways that the Indonesian government has demonstrated its commitment to dealing with the haze issue.

The first was the formation in 2016 of the Peatland Restoration Agency, which was tasked with carrying out programmes to restore Indonesia’s carbon-rich peatlands.

To this end, new regulations were rolled out, such as a land swop scheme aiming to get companies off deep peatlands and to move to mineral soils instead, said Dr Samadhi.

The Indonesian government also conducted mapping exercises using Lidar technology to provide data on water levels. If water table levels are too low, peatlands could become more flammable.

Dr Samadhi said these government initiatives have contributed to the clear skies in the region in the past three years.

But other factors not within direct control, such as the weather, played a role too. “Recently, we have also had the advantage of having wetter weather,” Dr Samadhi said.

Sub-national elections in Indonesia could also have contributed to the haze-free skies, as local politicians would have greater incentive to prevent fires, Dr Samadhi said.

Given the role that unpredictable factors play in contributing to the haze, he added, it is hard to predict if South-east Asia could achieve its target of being haze-free by 2020. The target was set by Asean environment ministers after the 2015 crisis.

Ms Zhang Wen, executive director of volunteer group People’s Movement to Stop Haze (PM.Haze), said that for Asean to reach its 2020 target, financial institutions need to play their part.

“We hope local and regional banks can develop clear policies on not financing companies linked to unsustainable practices, such as slash-and-burn techniques, deforestation, and peat drainage. They should also develop clear timelines to help their clients to improve their practices, by adhering to standards set out in eco-certification schemes,” she said.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on May 19, 2018, with the headline ‘S’pore set for third straight haze-free year’.
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Endangered Bornean Orangutans Threatened Further By Wildfires, Both Natural And Human-Made

Endangered Bornean Orangutans Threatened Further By Wildfires, Both Natural And Human-Made

By  @HimGoJourno 

rangutans are among the closest relatives of Homo sapiens, and their three known species are part of the seven great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos and the eastern and western gorillas being the other four — that have survived the onslaught of time and human activity. The latter, particularly land clearing for agriculture and felling trees for logging, are considered as the main factors that have brought orangutans close to the edge of extinction, but a new threat has been brought to light — wildfires.

All three species of orangutans — Bornean, Sumatran and the recently discovered Tapanuli — are found in a small part of Southeast Asia, mostly in Indonesia, and are already listed as critically endangered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. Indonesia is also infamous for its annual forest fires, which sometimes blanket the entire region in smoke and haze for months.

Wendy Erb, a researcher from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, was studying male orangutans in Indonesian Borneo when the fires started (often done by small farmers to clear forest land) in 2015. A few weeks later, Erb noticed a change in the male orangutans’ vocalizations, specifically in the call scientists think males use to attract females and to warn other males.

“I thought they sounded raggedy, a little like humans who smoke a lot,” Erb said in a statement Tuesday, and that prompted her to investigate the effects of inhaling smoke on the orangutans’ health.

(more…)

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Indonesia to raise efforts to reduce haze

Indonesia to raise efforts to reduce haze

Vows to introduce measures to prevent blazes in fire-prone peatland areas

May 3, 2018

The Indonesian government has pledged to raise its efforts to reduce annual choking haze caused by forest fires and crop burning that blanket not only large parts of Indonesia but also several other Southeast Asian countries.

Declaring 2018 as a “zero smoke year”, Bambang Hendroyono, general secretary of the Environment and Forestry Ministry said the government has come up with a concrete plan to reduce the air pollution.

This involved closer monitoring of peatland areas — especially the activities of farmers — speeding up conservation and forest restoration efforts, wetting arid areas and public awareness campaigns.

“Conservation of peatlands is important to decrease the intensity of forest and peatland fires,” said Hendroyono, at a meeting on peatland management in Banjar, Central Kalimantan.

Preventing peatland — of which Indonesia has 14.9 million hectares — from catching fire is a key element of the government’s plan as it acts as a natural fuel and is very difficult to put out once a fire starts.

According to Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar, a fire has consumed more than 3 million hectares of peatland in the last three years.

“Conservation of peatland is important to decrease the intensity of forest and peatlands fires,” Hendroyono said.

Father Frans Sani Lake, head of the church-run Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation group in the Kalimantan region responded by warning the government that it would take a mammoth effort to significantly reduce fires and that they would remain a big threat, particularly during the dry season.

“Being free from haze is a dream of all people. But, we must be realistic and be prepared,” he told ucanews.com.

The priest said the church has urged Catholics — through homilies, catechism, and announcements in churches — to be wary of activities that trigger forest fires.

Sacred Heart Father Ansel Amo, who heads Merauke Archdiocese’s Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation Commission in Papua, welcomed the government’s move.

“All should respond to this, which serves as a reminder for all of us to protect forests and peatlands, particularly during the dry season,” he said.

Annisa Rahmawati, Senior Forest Campaigner at Greenpeace Southeast Asia said such a commitment to reduce fires must be ongoing.

She said this year there has already been a 20 percent increase on the 2,400 hotspots found last year.

“We hope the government promise is turned into real action,” she told ucanews.com.

Source Link: https://www.ucanews.com/news/indonesia-to-raise-efforts-to-reduce-haze/82201

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Asian Games to boost Indonesia’s war on forest fires

Asian Games to boost Indonesia’s war on forest fires

Thomson Reuters Foundation

Every dry season, large parts of Southeast Asia are shrouded in pollution caused by forest fires in Indonesia, many sets deliberately to clear land for pulp and paper and palm oil plantations. What’s the government doing about this?

Indonesia’s choking annual haze will be limited this year by the pressure of hosting the Asian Games and a new approach to preventing forest fires, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Every dry season—usually from June until October—large parts of Southeast Asia are shrouded in pollution caused by forest fires in Indonesia, many sets deliberately to clear land for pulp and paper and palm oil plantations.

Indonesia’s government switched focus from containment to prevention after a particularly bad outbreak in 2015 that cost the country $16 billion and caused more than 500,000 people to come down with respiratory ailments.

“Before 2015 it was all about suppressing the fires, but now it’s about prevention,” said Raffles Panjaitan, director of forest and land fire management at the forestry ministry.

If the haze comes, then aeroplanes cannot get through and land, which will stop the athletes.

Raffles Panjaitan, director, forest and land fire management, Ministry of Forestry

The spotlight on Indonesia as it hosts the 2018 Asian Games from Aug. 18 to Sept. 2 makes it all the more important to tackle the problem, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“If the haze comes, then aeroplanes cannot get through and land, which will stop the athletes,” he said on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit in Yogyakarta, on the Indonesian island of Java.

“It’s important for us,” he said of the Games, which will be co-hosted by the Sumatran city of Palembang and Jakarta.

Over the last three years, Indonesia has introduced a range of new policies including educating and training communities in fire prevention and setting up a Peatland Restoration Agency to tackle fires and protect peatland, said Panjaitan.

Peatlands—made up of partially decayed vegetation, typically saturated with water—hold huge amounts of carbon, and are important habitats for endangered species, like tigers, according to the campaign group Greenpeace.

It has drafted in the military, built early warning towers and organized patrols to monitor the burning, he said.

Panjaitan said better coordination of local governments, villagers, and companies could help reduce the risk.

Local leaders may turn a blind eye to burning of peatlands for fear of losing votes in elections later this year, he added.

Experts said the haze problem, which affects Malaysia and Singapore as well as Indonesia, would only be resolved if governments and the private sector, including the palm oil and aviation industries, came together to tackle it jointly.

“You need to take the people that are potentially the most affected—including the private sector—and sit everybody around the table to sort this out,” said Robert Nasi, head of the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research.

Link: http://www.eco-business.com/news/asian-games-to-boost-indonesias-war-on-forest-fires/

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Entering the dry season, watch out for fire in forest and plantation area

Entering the dry season, watch out for a fire in forest and plantation area

Wednesday, Apr 18, 2018, | 02:11 pm

News24xx.com – Some parts of Indonesia region had entered dry season this month. Some regions need to cautious of forest and land area blaze.

“Facing dry season this year, we need to be more cautious for a fire in forest and plantation areas,” said Head of BMKG (Meteorology, Climatology and Geology agencies), Dwikorita Karnawati in her statement, Tuesday, April 17th, 2018

The region where vulnerable of happening of Karhutla (fire of forest and plantation areas), which are Aceh and North Sumatra, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, Gorontalo, South Sulawesi, North Sulawesi and  South Papua

Entering the dry season, some areas of Indonesia are affected by weak category of La Nina and can be moved to its normal conditions in September 2018.  BMKG clarified that there was no indication of abnormal weather.

“BMKG predicted that the Indian Ocean is constantly in the normal condition in April up to September 2018,” said Dwikora.

Wind circulation has been dominated by Australia monsoon wind (eastern) almost in all Indonesia region from the southern equator. Eastern wind brings dry wind from the Australian continent.

News24xx.com/fik/red

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Link: http://www.news24xx.com/read/news/6188/Entering-the-dry-season-watch-out-for-fire-in-forest-and-plantation-area

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Terra and Aqua Satellites Again Detect Five Hotspots in Aceh Province

Terra and Aqua Satellites Again Detect Five Hotspots in Aceh Province

BANDA ACEH, NNC – Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS sensors attached to two satellites, Terra and Aqua, detect five hotspots in the province of Aceh.

“This morning, monitored five hotspots in Aceh again,” said Head of Data and Information of Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) of Aceh, Zakaria Ahmad in Aceh Besar, Wednesday (4/11/2018).

The five hot spots, he added, were re-detected by the satellites after on Tuesday, (4/10), were also observed in the same location, that is, two regencies in Aceh.

Four hotspots are concentrated in the highlands, that is, Central region of Aceh which is a producer of Arabica and Robusta coffee, Bener Meriah Regency.

In the coffee-producing regency, hotspots are spread over three sub-district, such as, Bandar two spots, Permata and Syiah Utama each one spot.

The rest of hotspot was detected in North Aceh Regency, in Simpang Keuramat Sub-district which has a confidence level of 56 percent.

Read more: http://www.en.netralnews.com/news/currentnews/read/20170/terra.and.aqua.satellites.again.detect.five.hotspots.in.aceh.province

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Indonesia Peatland Swap Plan Questioned Over Deforestation Risk

Indonesia Peatland Swap Plan Questioned Over Deforestation Risk

Kanupriya Kapoor, Fergus Jensen

JAKARTA (Reuters) – An Indonesian plan to curb the commercial use of peatlands, by swapping nearly 1 million hectares of forestry concessions on carbon-rich peat, risks simply displacing environmental destruction to other parts of the archipelago, green groups say.

Indonesia was blamed for one of the worst ever peat and forest fire crises that blanketed much of Southeast Asia in thick haze in 2015, and since then has sought to take back and protect vast tracts of peatlands from corporations.

But environmentalists say a new ‘land swap’ policy – which will affect an area the size of Lebanon – may undermine those efforts if the relatively undamaged land is given to companies that in the past have been criticized for unsustainable practices.

An Indonesian environment ministry official said under the deal companies will be evaluated over the course of this year to assess how well they have restored damaged peatland on existing concessions before receiving new land elsewhere.

“For this land swap, we will look for empty land that is non-productive,” said Hilman Nugroho, a senior official at the environment ministry.

An alliance of 10 environmental organizations said in a joint statement this week that the government was not being open about what land would be exchanged.

“We fear that vast areas of natural forest, especially in Kalimantan, Sumatra (island), and Papua will be designated for land swaps and converted into pulpwood plantations in the name of peatland restoration,” the environmental organizations said. Kalimantan is the Indonesian portion of Borneo island.

“The policy will also threaten the livelihoods and cultures of indigenous peoples,” said the statement, which was issued by groups including the World Wildlife Fund Indonesia and Eyes on the Forest.

To estimate where potential land concessions would be given away, the alliance compared satellite imagery of forested area with known government allocations of land suitable for plantations and inactive land.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-environment-forests/indonesia-peatland-swap-plan-questioned-over-deforestation-risk-idUSKCN1HD1D3

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When bogs burn, the environment takes a hit

When bogs burn, the environment takes a hit

The peat sequestered in the wet ground keeps much of Earth’s carbon out of the atmosphere

BY LAUREL HAMERS 12:00 PM MARCH 6, 2018

In 2015, massive wildfires burned through Indonesia, sending thick smoke and haze as far as Thailand.

These fires were “the worst environmental disaster in modern history,” says Thomas Smith, a wildfire expert at King’s College London. Smith estimates that the fires and smoke killed 100,000 people in Indonesia and neighboring countries and caused billions of dollars in damage. The fires were costly for the rest of the planet, too: At their peak, the blazes belched more climate-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day than did all U.S. economic activity.

Two years later and 13,000 kilometers away, a fire smoldered on the fringes of a barren, northern landscape. The remote blaze could have gone unnoticed. But Jessica McCarty and other fire researchers actively monitor satellite imagery of Earth the way some people check Facebook. One Sunday in August, McCarty, of Miami University in Ohio, was surprised to see massive plumes of what appeared to be white smoke over a swath of Greenland. The giant landmass had not been on her fire radar. It’s mostly ice and the parts that don’t have sparse vegetation.

The settings of these two blazes couldn’t have been more different, but scientists suspect the two had something important in common: plenty of decaying organic matter known as peat.

Peatlands — which include bogs, other swampy wetlands and, yes, Greenland’s icy soil — are ecosystems rich in the decayed organic matter.

In their healthy, soggy state, peatlands are quite fire resistant. So when it comes to fire risk, peat-heavy landscapes haven’t historically gotten the same attention as, say, the dry pine forests of the western United States. But with those devastating peat fires in Indonesia, the spotlight has turned to the planet’s other peatlands, too.

Worldwide, peatlands store massive amounts of carbon in thick blankets of wet organic matter accumulated in the ground over centuries. And though they cover just 3 to 5 percent of Earth’s land surface, peatlands store a quarter of all soil carbon. That adds up to more carbon than all of the world’s forests combined.

But changes in land use — draining the water to plant acres of crops that demand drier soil, a common practice in tropical regions, or building a road through an area — can dry out the peat. And then, a single carelessly tossed cigarette or an errant lightning strike can ignite a fire that will smoke and smolder for months, releasing thousands of years of stored carbon as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Or fires set to clear land for agriculture can get out of hand like they’ve done in Indonesia: Over the last few decades, the country has drained many of its peatlands to grow oil palms and other crops. Now, the country is seeing the worst-case scenario of what can happen when peatlands are disrupted and desiccated. In northern latitudes, meanwhile, thawing permafrost exposes peat that has been buried for years, which can fuel fires like those seen in Greenland last summer.

In the short term, peat fires clog the air with deadly smoke and smog. In densely populated areas such as Indonesia, blazes can devour homes and businesses and claim lives. But the fires’ impact lingers long after the flames die down. Peat fires reshape entire ecosystems. Once the peat burns away, it can take thousands of years to build up again. And all of the carbon that was once neatly stored away is instead floating around in the atmosphere, contributing to climate change much like burning coal does.

Now, scientists are trying to get a better handle on peatlands and the effects of agriculture, development and a climate that’s shifting toward warmer and drier. Recent discoveries of hidden peatlands in Africa and South America expand the extent of peat around the world, and up the stakes for protecting those carbon stores. New research is making it increasingly clear that, without a shift in approach, humans might strip away healthy peatlands and get, in return, a lot of climate-warming carbon dioxide.

Read more: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bogs-peatlands-fire-climate-change

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Indonesia mobilizes to combat health-damaging forest fires

Indonesia mobilizes to combat health-damaging forest fires

The Associated Press

February 21, 2018 03:46 AM

Updated February 21, 2018 03:47 AM

JAKARTA, INDONESIA

Four Indonesian provinces have declared emergencies in anticipation of worsening forest fires that each year spread health-damaging haze across much of Southeast Asia.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency said Wednesday that emergency alerts in Riau and South Sumatra provinces on the island of Sumatra and West and Central Kalimantan on Borneo will make it easier to mobilize fire-fighting operations and support from the central government.

The agency said satellites have detected 90 “hotspots” or fires across Indonesia, with the biggest numbers in West and Central Kalimantan. Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province, has been blanketed in smoke, it said.

Record Indonesian forest fires in 2015 spread haze across a swath of Southeast Asia and, according to a study by Harvard and Columbia universities, hastened 100,000 deaths.