Jakarta (Antara) – The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) Climate Justice Campaign Manager Yuyun Harmono, warned that the land and forest fire currently engulfing Riau and other regions pose a serious threat to Indonesia's emission reduction goal.

"The land and forest fires continue to happen, especially in Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, Central Kalimantan, and West Kalimantan. These occurrences endangers Indonesia's target to reduce emissions, especially in the land-based sector," said Yuyum in Jakarta today.

The Indonesian government has set a target of reducing emissions independently by 26 percent in 2020, which will be further reduced to 29 percent by 2030. Meanwhile, the 41 percent reduction target comes with international assistance.

Yuyun stated that the forest fires continue to worsen nearing the Climate Action Summit. This will make the government's claim on deforestation emission's reduction insignificant if forest fires continue to happen.

From January to August of 2019, the total land and forest fire has affected 328,724 hectares, which produced emissions to 109.7 million tons of CO2. The peatland wildfires during the same period released 82.7 million tons of CO2.

"Central and regional governments seem to fail to learn from previous annual occurrences," said the Walhi member.

Source: https://en.tempo.co/read/1250400/walhi-emissions-reduction-target-jeopardized-by-forest-fires