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Indonesia’s Fires Are Serious, so Why Isn’t Indonesia Taking Them Seriously?

Fires have now been burning across several islands since September, producing more greenhouse gases than the daily output of the United States.
Photo by Björn Vaughn

Every year with the dry monsoon, farmers and landowners across the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo burn off peat forests to make way for new agriculture. This includes plantations for pulpwood and, as you might expect, palm oil.

Tropical peat forests are some of the most carbon-dense environments on the planet. Their trees grow from a bed of compacted, decomposed plant material that accrues carbon over thousands of years. When these forests burn they release this carbon in gases such as methane, which has 21 times the greenhouse influence of CO2. That's how for nearly a month Indonesia's fires produced more greenhouse gases than the daily output of the United States.

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This year's fires are currently on track to be their most damaging on record, measured in terms of air quality. Yet despite pressure from Singapore and Malaysia, the Indonesian government has done surprisingly little. There have been a few resolutions, but not much action, and certainly no urgency.

To find out more about what's happening on the ground and why there's been such a lackadaisical response, we spoke to Jakarta-based Erik Meijaard, who works in forestry management across Borneo.

None of these photos have been color-doctored. All by Björn Vaughn

VICE: Hi Erik, let's start with the forests. They're national parks right?
Erik Meijaard: A lot are. There was a good, in-depth study on how local farmers get funding to go up these mountains in national parks to burn the land illegally. No one really knows what a particular piece of land is, so [agriculture companies] are kind of just playing in the margins; see if they can get some titles, make it formal first, make a claim, and then see if they can somehow formalize that claim. I think this is happening in lots of places in Indonesia, because the governances are completely broken down.

So to be clear, private companies are burning public land?
I don't have clear data on that but a lot of the peat forests are traditionally kawasan hutan (state forest). You can't develop these areas into oil palm plantations. They need to be degazetted before they can be used and that's why there's a big network of Mafioso-types linked to local government. I think a lot of people are looking for opportunities for expanding.

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Who are the guys lighting the fires?
These are people who are spare-time burners. There's a clear pattern in the fire—the haze gets very high over weekends. They work in offices in Palangkaraya [Central Borneo] or Pekanbaru [in Sumatra] during the week, and then they take time off and they go to burn. This is a well-directed, well-planned, exercised process of claiming land.

And it's essentially due to corruption?
Yeah, but the big question is how far can you draw that up to the national government, but I don't know. We can only guess, but we know that they're not clean here.

What's the most frustrating part about this story?
The callousness. There is a general acceptance that people are dying there, and too many people are shrugging their shoulders and saying, I don't give a shit.

Why do you think there's been so little action?
I think the government's response matches the lack of international pressure. I mean there have been some angry Malaysian and Singaporean messages and inter-governmental meetings but nothing big. It'd be very nice if President Obama would mention this in his talk with President Joko Widodo. But more importantly, the pressure needs to come nationally. As far as I can see, there's a lot of very pissed off people from Borneo or Sumatra, but their voices are small.

Do you think a lack of international action also comes from a lack of awareness?
Partly. It's not a Chernobyl-type thing that blows up in your face. This is a silent tragedy happening. Slowly people are suffocating, babies are suffocating. There are good people involved, bad people involved, but there are no clear villains.

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Do you think that if the government was serious about stopping this it could?
I've got an interesting parallel to this from about 2005. At that time illegal logging was rampant and I worked in East Borneo. Every night we'd get 30 to 40 trucks passing through the village, all loaded with illegal timber. This was a time when the government started to realize how much money Indonesia was losing in timber, all taken to Malaysia without any taxes going into the state's copper.

So the government started taking this seriously and the army came in and the problem disappeared within a month. No more trucks! Ultimately Indonesia is a pretty law-abiding country. If someone enforced the law I really believe this situation could change.

Failing military intervention, how long do you think it will take until the fires are put out?
Well it's in the peats and the peats are dry, so it can burn for months. You can extinguish the fire on the surface but it can pop up again in some other spot. What we need to put out the fires is a couple weeks of hard, consistent rain. That will hopefully come with the November monsoon.

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