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Parched Borneo catches fire again

Source
International Herald Tribune - February 24, 1998

Seth Mydans, Samarinda – Indonesia The eastern coast of Borneo, dry after a year of drought, is bursting into flame again, raising fears that a wave of choking smoke could soon blanket Southeast Asia as it did last autumn.

Desperate to survive as food shortages and bankruptcies spread in Indonesia both small farmers and plantation owners have apparently resumed their slash-and-burn land clearing despite a government ban on burning and in defiance of pleas by neighboring countries.

The fires and the continuing drought broken in much of the country only by sporadic rain showers are bringing added misery to a nation that is suffering its worst economic and political crisis in decades.

The drought has ruined crops and added to the unemployment and food shortages that are causing price riots around the country in a social parallel to last year's wildfires.

From hilltops here in Kalimantan Timur Province, plumes of smoke can be seen in every direction. As the wind shifts unpredictably, flames eat their way through the forests, driving birds and animals ahead of them. Farmers with machetes rush to cut fire breaks. Clouds of sweet smoke sting the eyes and bring an early dusk to villages.

"I was up all night fighting a fire near my home," said Badui, a farmer, as he hacked underbrush at the edges of a crackling fire north of Samarinda. "Now I'm helping my friend save his home. It was the same thing last year." At a tracking station here, brightly colored computerized satellite images show hundreds of shifting hot spots. Most are clustered here in the country's driest province. But two new clusters appeared recently in northeastern Sumatra, the other Indonesian island that was a source of the regionwide haze last year.

"If the meteorology predictions are right, the dry season may be longer than last year," said Longgena Ginting, coordinator of forestry advocacy at Walhi, an environmental lobbying group. "If that happens, I am quite sure the fires will be worse than they were last year. It really depends on the weather."

Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have already voiced their concern. Malaysia is particularly worried about the possibility that smoke could ruin its plans to play host to the Commonwealth Games in September.

The smog last autumn affected six Southeast Asian nations, forcing the closing of airports, contributing to ship collisions and cutting deeply into the tourism industry. It also caused widespread health problems and led to the evacuation of many foreign diplomats and executives.

The root cause of the problem has not changed, Longgena Ginting said. "In Kalimantan, the fires are mostly caused by plantations and timber estates that have started to clear land again."

The cheap clearing of land by burning will be harder than ever to stop, given the economic hardships that make it less likely that plantation owners will shift to more expensive mechanized methods.

In addition, said Charles Barber, a senior researcher for the World Resources Institute: "The government has no money now to do enforcement or oversight. This is a problem in all areas of environmental management. It's a very unfortunate confluence of events: the drought, a boom in land clearing, which never had very good oversight, and now less money to focus on what goes on out in the field.

"Combine that with a large amount of dead and dry biomass, which is lying around from incompletely burned areas from 1997, and you could have some real rough fires. It could be worse in May than it was even last September."

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