Despite prohibitions on agricultural burning, wildfires continued ravaging forests across Thailand yesterday, especially in the North. Satellite images charting the progress of large fires yesterday morning showed the number of hotspots in the north had risen from 823 on Friday to 1,334. A total of 3,238 forest fires were recorded nationwide.
The Siem Reap provincial Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said it will offer a 10 million riel ($2,500) reward to those who provide information regarding the suspects responsible for setting ablaze more than 20ha of kranhuong timber forest land in Banteay Srei district.
Department director Tea Kimsoth told The Post on Thursday that more than 20ha of kranhuong timber forest were secretly set on fire on Tuesday evening to lay illegal ownership of the land.
“Our specialist, as well as local authorities and residents in the communities, had been working to protect this forest since 2012. But offenders had burned the land in a blink of an eye.
“I will reward 10 million riel to anyone who can point us to the suspects,” he said.
Banteay Srei district deputy police chief Ros Sisovanna told The Post on Thursday that last year, more than 200ha of the kranhuong forests were completely cleared through burning. However, the culprits responsible had not yet been identified.
“In the case of this forest fire, we suspect that villagers who have houses and agricultural land near the area burned it secretly so that they could encroach on it.
“They must have wanted to expand their agricultural land, but we still have no evidence to present against them,” he said.
Seng Lorn, the chief of the Forestry Administration in the commune who led the operation to extinguish the fire on Tuesday, told The Post that authorities could not immediately gain access to the land due to the lack of roads in the area.
“We spent more than three hours to put out the flames. Because of the hot weather and the shortage in water supply, we don’t expect the burned kranhuong trees to recover until the rainy season,” he said.
Provincial Forestry Administration chief Mong Bunlim said the kranhuong timber forest area in the district covered 2,800ha, adding that the unprecedented fire was caused by people.
“Article 97 of the Forestry Law says that any person guilty of starting forest fires on purpose and without authorisation will face five to 10 years imprisonment,” he said.
Bunlim said the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries would gather residents and relevant departments at the beginning of the rainy season to replant kranhuong trees, which, in turn, would restore the forest.
Link: https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/ten-million-riel-reward-forest-arsonists
Forests don’t make headlines; forest fires do. Unfortunately, in the past year, forests have been in the news for the wrong reasons.
Wildfires are common during dry seasons in many forests around the world and contribute to the health of the forest by making way for new life. But the frequency and ferocity of fires is increasing. Major fires have burned across all continents except Antarctica in the past year. These fires are a harbinger of a new normal in a changing climate as scientists have longed warned.
Three damaging wildfires stood out: In Australia today, the scale of the fires is unimaginable. They are affecting an area bigger than small European countries and having enormous impacts on people and wildlife. They still aren’t extinguished, and future fire seasons could be even worse.
2019 also saw an uptick in fires in the Amazon Basin. There was a concern that the fires were following an increase in deforestation, which was later confirmed by official Brazilian data, and a deeper concern that parts of the forest may be reaching a tipping point.
In the Arctic, we saw troubling images of fires in Siberia and Alaska. Fires in the great boreal forests that circle the entire northern hemisphere are natural, but the scale of the fires in 2019 was unprecedented, with record high temperatures north of the Arctic Circle.
While different in scale, each of these fires has had significant effects: more and more people are being killed as fires become the new norm in many countries. Air quality is impacted as fires blanket whole regions with haze cities – Australia has recorded the worst pollution levels in the world – and wildlife is increasingly impacted. This all contributes to more carbon emissions to the atmosphere.
But this is not a story of despondency. Nature may be on the front lines of a changing climate. But it can also be one of our strongest allies to reduce emissions globally as well as enhance resilience for communities and landscapes. Nature-based solutions can deliver up to a third of the emission reductions needed to keep temperatures below 2oC. To harness this potential there are three strategies that the world must urgently prioritise:
1. Stop deforestation
Deforestation remains at near-record highs despite significant investment from the private sector to reduce deforestation in supply chains. The challenge is significantly more complex than any single actor can solve alone. Heading into 2020, it’s clear that companies need to redouble their efforts but also work more closely with governments and the finance sector to eliminate commodity driven deforestation.
We also need to recognise that an increasing amount of deforestation is driven by illegality and criminality in many countries, as well as by poverty. We must increase the political will to eradicate criminality, and we need to support greater investment in development and creation of economic alternative for smallholder farmers in situations where converting forest may be the difference between hunger and health.
None of this is easy that is why there is an urgent need for concerted collective action – looking at and working to improve all parts of the whole. That is how we stop deforestation.
2. Work together to manage fires
Learning to better manage fires will be critical for enhancing resilience and reducing the impacts of more intense and frequent fires. But there are few mechanisms to share knowledge and practices globally. Global Forest Watch and other platforms now offer more interactive tools for monitoring fires, but we are not learning nor celebrating the success of fighting fires.
For example, Indonesia has experienced several catastrophic forest fires, often made worse by peat land with a huge carbon store, which once ignited is difficult to extinguish. The fires of 2015 were estimated to have killed 100,000 people. The dry season of 2019 also threatened to be difficult, but improved fire management from both the government, which established a Peat Restoration Agency in 2016, and leading private companies like APRIL and APP, who run Fire Free Village programs around their estates have been successful at reducing instances and severity of fires.
In addition, indigenous communities around the world have worked with fire for centuries in many countries around the world to manage their landscapes. By setting fires early in the season, they can avoid catastrophic fires in the height of the dry season. I had the honour to spend a week with Aboriginal Rangers in the Kimberly and saw the pride and cultural significance of this work. There is potential to scale these efforts.
3. Accelerate restoration
Last, but by no means least, we need to unleash a global restoration movement. There is growing understanding that reforestation and better land management is one of the best solutions we have to actively drawdown carbon from the atmosphere and lock the carbon up in our forests, grasslands and wetlands. Scientists estimate there were 6 trillion trees after the last ice age, but we are now down to a little over 3 trillion.
The World Economic Forum launched a new platform 1t.org, a multistakeholder effort to support efforts to grow, restore and conserve 1 trillion trees around the world. By growing, restoring and conserving a trillion trees or more over the course of the next decade, we have the chance to reduce climate risk, enhance water security, reverse biodiversity declines and create millions of rural jobs.
None of these strategies are easy. But by eliminating deforestation, improving fire management investing in restoration, we have the chance to enhance our resilience in the face of changing climate, reducing climate risk, reversing biodiversity declines and enhancing water security. Most importantly we also have the opportunity to create millions of jobs for rural communities.
As we start new decade, it is imperative that we commit together to co-create a forest-positive future.
This article is related to the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 21-24 January 2020.
The Riau Police have fired a local police chief for his lackluster performance in handling land and forest fires in the province’s Pelalawan regency.
Second Insp. Hindro Renhard Panjaitan was dismissed from his position as Teluk Meranti Police chief after failing to address raging forest fires in Teluk Meranti district in Pelalawan, where fires and haze have been repeatedly experienced during the dry season.
Hindro’s dismissal was an indication of the police force’s determination to ensure officers’ performance and readiness in anticipating forest fires and haze, particularly since police personnel had committed to striving to mitigate land and forest fires long before the dry season came last year, said Riau Police chief Insp. Gen. Agung Setya Imam Effendi.
“Every police officer in Riau should be prepared and serious in handling land and forest fires. In the meantime, realizing the commitment of zero land and forest fires and zero haze is the focus of the Riau Police,” Agung said on Tuesday.
Separately, Pelalawan Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. M Hasyim Risahondua said that Hindro had been replaced by Second. Insp. Dimas, who previously worked in the police’s traffic unit.
“The dismissal is proof of the commitment in our efforts to anticipate and mitigate land and forest fires, especially in areas that see forest fires and haze every year,” Hasyim said. “If one lacks seriousness, one will face the consequence of being dismissed.”
He said personnel who were serious and anticipated forest fires would be rewarded.
“The reward will be in accordance with the intensity of their work in the field. All achievements will be reported to the Riau Police chief,” he said. (gis)
The poor air quality is making equipment harder to operate, and some workers have had to take leave to fight fires. The irony was not lost on many in Australia.
SYDNEY, Australia — Australia’s biggest mining company, BHP, announced on Tuesday that coal output was down at one of its large mines. The reason? Smoke from the country’s ferocious wildfires — a crisis fed by climate change, which is caused in no small part by the burning of coal.
The reduced air quality in New South Wales, the country’s most populous state, has helped slow the company’s production of electricity-generating coal by 11 percent there, BHP said in a review of its midyear financial results.
“We are monitoring the situation, and if air quality continues to deteriorate, then operations could be constrained further in the second half of the year,” said the company, which ends its fiscal year on June 30.
The irony was not lost on many in Australia.
The country, which just endured its hottest and driest year on record, has been dealing for months with bush fires that have killed at least 29 people, ravaged tens of millions of acres, and left residents in its largest cities wheezing from the most polluted air in the world.
“You Can’t Make This Stuff Up!” Terry Serio, an actor and musician, said on Twitter.
“I did roll my eyes,” Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, a policy institute, said in an interview.
The smoke, Dr. Hare said, was most likely a minor inconvenience in the supply chain for BHP, the globe’s biggest mining company. But, he added, it served as a “wake-up call” to BHP that the world needs to wean itself off coal to avert the most damaging effects of climate change.
“You can see the mood is changing in Australia,” Dr. Hare said. “Sooner or later, the companies are going to run out of social license.”
A BHP spokesman said that smoke from the bush fires had reduced visibility and made equipment harder to operate at the Mount Arthur coal site 150 miles north of Sydney.
In addition, some employees have taken leave from work to protect their properties from fires or to serve as volunteer firefighters.
While the fires have affected production, the spokesman said, the slowdown was also the result of a shift to mining higher-quality products. But even as the company investigates options to reduce its climate impact, he said, coal will remain a major part of its energy production mix.
Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal, and the industry wields wide influence on the country’s political leaders. The country has annual coal exports worth 67 billion Australian dollars, or about $45 billion, including to major nations like China, Japan and India.
Although Australia emits only about 1.2 percent of global greenhouse gases, its economic reliance on fossil fuel extraction makes it the sixth-biggest producer of fuels that release carbon. Those emissions are expected to double by 2030, according to a 2019 report from the United Nations Environment Program.
Under Australia’s current conservative leadership, emissions have been rising, and renewable energy targets have stagnated, even as the government says it will meet its carbon reduction targets under the Paris climate agreement. Climate scientists say the targets were among the weakest of those proposed by developed nations.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/coal-company-bhp-smoke.html
NAKHON RATCHASIMA: Forest fires which have been burning in parts of Khao Yai National Park since early this month are reported to have been finally put out.
The bushfires were first reported on Jan 5 by national park officials in Khao Siad-a, Khao Ang Hin and Khao Nok Yung forest reserves near Ban Nong Yang in tambon Phayayen of Pak Chong district. They were believed to have started about five days previously.
Crews from several stations in the national park were mobilised to combat the blazes.
The last flames were extinguished about noon on Monday, according to a local media report.
An investigation is underway into the cause of the fires.
Link: https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1835439/khao-yai-bushfires-extinguished
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 14 — State governments, local authorities and land owners are advised to take appropriate measures to prevent forest fire.
Water, Land and Natural Resources Ministry (KATS), in a statement, said they should also take steps to prevent irresponsible quarters from trespassing into their property, such as landfills, forest areas, plantations, farms, as well as agriculture and industrial areas to carry out open burning.
“Due to the dry weather condition that is expected in the peninsula, all quarters are also advised not to carry out open burning or to allow their land or premises to be encroached upon resulting in open burning accidentally or for a certain reason,” it said.
It said the ministry, through the Peninsular Malaysia Forestry Department, is always aware of forest fires, especially if they occurred in the Permanent Forest Reserve area.
Several preventive and control measures against forest fire in the peninsula have been taken, including with the collaboration of the Malaysian Space Agency (MySA) and the Malaysian Meteorological Department (MET Malaysia) to obtain updates on hot spot and fire risk areas.
The Forestry Department is also working with the Department of Minerals and Geoscience to build tube wells and “check dams” in areas with risks of catching forest fire.
To date, 85 tubes have been built in the peninsula, it said, adding that monitoring towers were also built in areas with potential to catch forest fire and fire-fighting equipment ready for use in forest fire fighting operations.
According to KATS, the forest fire in Australia should make all quarters realise the need to take appropriate action in improving environmental protection and addressing the growing threats to the ecosystem due to climate change.
Among the impact of forest fires on the environment are destruction to natural habitat, haze phenomena, health problems and loss of the forest biological diversity, it said. — Bernama
Residents face a nervous wait on Monday night as gusty, strong winds whip-up a blaze in the New South Wales Shoalhaven area which remains at emergency warning level.
The fire north of Batemans Bay has burnt through more than 16,000 hectares and was spreading quickly in a north-easterly direction towards coastal communities.
Fires that destroyed Indonesian rainforests pumped out more carbon dioxide than the blazes in the Amazon this year, according to the European Union’s atmosphere observation program.
12 November 2019
Bambang Hero Saharjo, who is the Indonesian lead expert witness on environmentally catastrophic peatland fires has been awarded the 2019 John Maddox Prize for his courage and integrity in standing up for sound science in the face of harassment, intimidation, and law suits.