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Indonesia told to admit, mitigate raging forest fires urgently

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Sydney Morning Herald - September 17, 2019

James Massola and Karuni Rompies, Jakarta – A coalition of environmental and human rights groups has accused the Indonesian government of being in denial about the severity of the fires raging across at least six provinces, and demanded a decisive response to the growing environmental disaster.

The coalition, which includes environment groups Walhi and Greenpeace Indonesia, the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation and human rights organisation Kontras, has called for the national and local governments to stop blaming each other and take concrete steps to address the problem.

Those steps include dispatching additional medical personnel, developing a rapid response system to tackle the fires – an annual problem during the dry season – and stop blaming local, small-scale landholders for the problem.

In an open letter, the coalition also urges the government to review the licences and concessions held by big companies that grow palm oil and other plantations, and who sometimes use fire to clear land.

Schools have been shut, dozens of flights have been cancelled and more than 40,000 people have been treated for acute respiratory infections as Indonesian authorities battle the fires on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

Indonesian police have arrested 185 people suspected of starting the fires that are burning out of control across six provinces, as thick haze of acrid smoke blankets parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

The fires rare are also threatening the lives and homes of orangutans, according to environmental groups.

Greenpeace Indonesia forests campaigner Ratri Kusumohartono, who has just returned from three weeks in Kalimantan, said the fires were worst since 2015, when 2.6 million hectares of forest were burnt.

"These are the worst since 2015, and it's only mid-September, this could go on through October and the rains [from the wet season] will only come in November," she said.

"We had a firefighters team planning to go there in September-October, but we brought it forward to August because already in mid-July the communities we were talking to were being overwhelmed."

Photos of orangutans under threat from the fires are going viral on social media and, Ratri said, the impact on their homes had been severe.

"It really affects them [orangutans] and even threatens them to the point where they can lose their homes and mess up their lifecycles," she said.

Hardi Baktiantoro, the founder of the Centre for Orangutan Protection, said the most endangered orangutans were in West Kalimantan, and the southern part of Central Kalimantan.

The fires in Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan and South Kalimantan have so far caused 328,724 hectares of land to be burnt this year, according to national disaster mitigation agency BNPB.

BNPB spokesman Agus Wibowo said that 2583 hot spots – that is, individual fires – had been detected on September 15 and 16. Forty-two helicopters had dropped more than 260 million litres of water on the blazes, while more than 9000 firefighters had been deployed to tackle the blaze.

The BNPB said 99 per cent of the hotspots were caused by deliberately set fires, leading to very poor air quality in six provinces with a combined population of 23 million people.

National police spokesman Dedi Prasetyo said police formally handed over investigations of 23 of those arrested to prosecutors last week, while 45 others will be tried later this month. Police are still investigating the rest.

He said the suspects could be prosecuted under an environmental protection law that allows a maximum 10-year prison sentence for setting fires to clear land.

According to date from Indonesia's Health Ministry, acute respiratory infections have affected 11,758 people in Palangka Raya, 15,346 in Riau and 15,047 in Jambi.

The ministry distributed more than 1.2 million masks in impacted areas as well as 1000 vials of respiratory medicine.

Data from AirNav Indonesia showed that flights from 11 airports have been affected by the blaze, more than 100 flights cancelled, more than 100 more delayed and other planes diverted.

The fires are an annual event in Indonesia, and often started by small land holders and plantation owners to facilitate land clearing. Some fires are situated in peatland making them much harder to extinguish.

President Joko Widodo visited Riau province on Monday afternoon to survey the damage.

The fires have also caused tensions between Indonesia and neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore, where the air quality has been badly affected.

Malaysia has closed hundreds of schools and distributed half a million face masks to the province of Sarawak, which is on the island of Borneo and next door to the fires in Kalimantan, and Malaysian environment minister Yeo Bee Yin has accused Indonesia of being denial that it was the source of the problem.

Indonesia rejected Malaysia's complaints, saying blazes were also raging in parts of Malaysia.

– with Reuters, AP

Source: https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/indonesia-told-to-admit-mitigate-raging-forest-fires-urgently-20190916-p52ryg.html

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