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Haze Problem

Take note that prior to the mid 1990s, we hardly have any haze. The dayak has been using the method of slash and burn, but their is of very small scale. On the other hand, the giant company burn thousands of hectares not just a few hectares. Now we know why Indonesia is the only Asean country that refuse to sign the agreement on haze because 69 of the companies that were revoked of their permits are government companies. How can they have a cheek to get monetary help to put off the fire when they rip the benefit by causing so much damage.

 

The Indonesian government says forest fires that sent a heavy smoke over large areas of Southeast Asia are receding...Earlier, state forestry officials and a company controlled by a timber tycoon were among 29 operations which lost their permits in a government crackdown. Indonesian newspapers report that 69 of the 151 revoked permits belonged to four government companies. Source(s):

http://www.ippl.org/indonesia.html...

 

It will do well for Singaporeans to adapt to the haze problem because it will get worse every year. Heres the reason:

In the course of my work, I had criss-crossed the whole Indonesian Kalimantan jungle for the past 26 years till my retirement last December. I have first hand knowledge of what is happening there. Except for Indonesian politicians, I believe not many Asean country politicians know the real reason behind the fires there. 

Whereas a lot of blame has been channeled to logging companies and plantation owners, the real culprits are the villagers (the dayaks) scattered all over the Kalimantan jungle. These farmers practice slash and burnt farming (planting padi and corn-maize). Except for a few illegal loggers, no logging campany want to burn the jungle. Their standing stock - trees are in the jungle. Why should they burn the trees. It is the farmers living within the logging concessions that chop down the trees and burn large areas of land. Although the logging companies are responsible, they cannot control the villagers. The police and army are too far away in the towns. There is no access road into the jungle. The villagers practice "law of the jungle". If there is any dispute with the logging companies, the villagers will assemble in hundreds and attack the logging companies' base camps, sometimes burning down the camps and heavy equipment such as bulldozers and trucks.

In oil palm plantataions, the situation is the same. Land given by the government to plantation developers are not contiguous. Within the plantations, there are pockets of dayak villages. Slash and burnt farming is also practiced there. Frequently, these fires spread to mature oil palm areas. Losses to plantation owners run into millions of dollars. Similarly, plantaion owners are helpless. Any dispute is also settled by the jungle law method.

As the population of the dayak people increases, so will the slash and burnt farming. It will get worse every year. As the Indonesian President said, there is no solution. Or, unless, they can unroot all the dayaks and relocate them in the town!

When ex-president Habibie said Singapore is a little red dot in a green ocean, he is not joking. Singaporeans must be aware that Indonesia is really very, very huge in size. I was working for three years in a logging concession in Balikpapan (East Kalimantan) and the area of the concession is 17 times the size of Singapore. It takes 14 hours to travel by a four wheel drive jeep from one end to the other end of the concession. In Singapore you phone the police from end of Tuas and they can deploy the police from Bedok within 20 minutes. In the Indonesian jungle, it may take you one week just to drive to the nearest police station to report a fire because there are no telephones.. 

The haze will stop though, maybe in 100 years from now when the whole of the Indonesian jungle is burnt down. Meanwhile, Singaporeans should stop complaining and get use to it. I got used to it long ago. I've lived in logging camps where I could not see the sun for one whole month as it was blocked by the haze.

If it is any consolation to my fellow Singaporeans, My doctor pronounced me healthy for the past 26 years medical check-up.   

Cheers and happy trading.    

 

Prevention is better than cure. Do not let the lung to become air filter due to man-made problem. If it is due to nature or god, then we may not able to change it. Why must all the human being suffer because of some people enriching themselves with no respect to the environment. Don't be foolhardy to run in haze of 150 PSI, just imagine how much ash the lung is filtering.

 

Aiyo,

A little of haze only lah, why so work up ? After all, this will teach Singaporean that life is not always good here, our gov can control this and control that, ha, ha, come to mother nature, you think you are god, try and see whether can control the wind direction. Next time go buy so wind mill from Netherland and blow back the haze !



Haze is only worry for those who have weak lung and asmahtic patient, other than this I see no big deal. If you ever stay in China - Nanjing and some industrial province, then you will feel sorry for those people. Everyday after work, when you go home and bath, you wash your nostril, the water flow out is black in colour. I am not kidding or boastful, I stay there for 6 months and I am the only person in my office that I put on a mask when travelling on the street. The people in my office, still laugh at me. Their haze is much worst. Here, this call "Haze", to me is just a small case only, fyi I still go East Coast park jogging in Friday night (no mask on)! So don't worry lah, take it easy !!! Good luck and take care, drink more water.

 

Giant companies like Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd. (APRIL) and Asia Pulp and Paper (APP).

APP contributed to 745 hotspots and APRIL 523

Both companies have their headquarters in Singapore and are part of powerful conglomerates -- Sinar Mas for APP, Raja Garuda Mas for APRIL -- controlled by tycoons Sukanto Tanoto, boss of Raja Garuda Mas which has interests in palm oil.

APRIL Fine Paper are sold in Spore, by the brand name of Excellent Copy Paper.  Ask your friends' companies, schools and govt dept to stop buying from them until the next haze (next year) season is over to make sure it does NOT carry on burning the forest land. Read earlier post as well on APRIL.

 

APRIL - Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited

Large areas of rainforest on the wildlife-rich island of Sumatra in Indonesia are being destroyed by paper-pulp company APRIL.

Since 1995, APRIL has logged over 220,000 hectares of Indonesian rainforest (about the one and a half times the size of Greater London).

One of APRIL's clear-cut logging sites is Tesso Nilo, regarded as the most biodiverse lowland forest on the planet.



Following pressure from Friends of the Earth, APRIL stopped clearing forest in Tesso Nilo. However, they still intend to clear another 150,000 hectares of rainforest in Sumatra.

 

Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) - one of the largest paper companies in the world - is responsible for the destruction of a large area of Indonesian rainforests.

Friends of the Earth's investigations have found that APP's rainforest derived paper is:

1. In widespread use in the UK
   Companies still selling APP paper include: York & Ford, Communisis BBF, WL Coller and David John.
2. Anonymous
   Most of the paper produced by APP is re-branded so you can't tell it's been produced by them or if it comes from rainforest.
3. Supported by British banks
   Over 300 financial institutions such as Barclays Bank and HSBC have financed Asia Pulp and Paper over the last 10 years.

 

Due to wind directions, the haze is pretty bad at NIGHT only. Lucky day time's air is still moderate to go out, so businesses aren't badly affected.

Seems like everyone is a 'smoker' during the haze. HeeHee!!

 

I have to shut the windows and turn on the air-con the whole day yesterday..  Even when I went out I left the air-con on for the doggy..  Guess she must be happy about the haze... Ha ha!  Utility bills sure to go up..

Hope the next few days will be better.

Cheers.

 

Exactly. Last night was really scary, almost couldn't see the next building. But luckily this morning it's all changed! Almost bright and clear.

 

I heard that the PSI went up beyond 150 last night. My eyes were tearing yesterday and I needed to use eyedrops! Terrible.

 

Oops, sorry accidentally press the ctrl key in the earlier post.

Central Kalimantan fires were burning in oil palm plantations owned by a Malaysian company (anyone knows which company, pls indicate).
Giant companies like Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd. (APRIL) and Asia Pulp and Paper (APP).

APP contributed to 745 hotspots and APRIL 523

Both companies have their headquarters in Singapore and are part of powerful conglomerates -- Sinar Mas for APP, Raja Garuda Mas for APRIL -- controlled by tycoons.

Sukanto Tanoto, boss of Raja Garuda Mas, which has interests in palm oil, construction and energy, was named as the richest man in Indonesia by Forbes Asia magazine last month.


Pls indicate their products and brands and pass the word around or thro the nets, emails to botcott their products. If the government cannot solve the problem, we as the citizens of this region must use the most powerful way, i.e. to boycott their products of these companies.

 

 

I fell sick a couple of days ago after going out for a little jog. Stay at home everyone... its hazardous!

 

Singapore's environment agency said satellite pictures showed 506 hotspots -- large areas with high temperatures indicating fires -- and thick smoke haze in Indonesia's Sumatra island, mainly in Riau, Jambi and South Sumatra provinces.

"The prevailing winds are transporting the smoke haze towards the Malacca Straits, peninsular Malaysia and Singapore," the agency said.

At 0600 GMT Saturday, Indonesia's ministry of forestry reported 2,000 hotspots in Kalimantan, mostly in Central Kalimantan province on Borneo island. On Sumatra island only 291 hotspots were burning, the ministry said.

Poor visibility of 50 to 100 metres (yards) in Palangkaraya, capital of Central Kalimantan province, stopped all flights in the morning, said Hidayat, an official from the local meteorological office.

A spokesman for Singapore's Changi Airport on Saturday said the haze had not affected operations at the regional aviation hub.

On Friday flights were disrupted in Malaysia's Sarawak province on Borneo island.

In Indonesian Borneo, hundreds of firefighters, aided by police and volunteers, have been trying to douse the illegal forest fires.

Residents in the southern Thailand provinces of Narathiwat and Yala, which border Malaysia, reported clear skies and fine visibility on Saturday.

Malaysia's meteorological department said it expected conditions to improve over the weekend in Sarawak as well as Sabah state and the country's north.

But light showers expected in the Kuala Lumpur area and the country's south would offer little respite there.

"It won't help very much," a department spokesman told AFP.

Indonesia's annual burn-off causes a haze that typically smothers parts of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand as well as Indonesia itself.

The Indonesian government has outlawed land-clearing by fire but weak enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.

"The fires are seasonal and very predictable, but the government never implements effective measures to prevent and manage them," said Nordin, of the Palangkaraya-based environmental group Save Our Borneo.

He alleged the Central Kalimantan fires were burning in oil palm plantations owned by a Malaysian company.

Singapore's The Straits Times called Saturday for Indonesian authorities to show they are taking action against illegal forest clearing.

"Southeast Asia needs more than just assurances that results are forthcoming," an editorial said. "The root cause remains indifference and illegal acts of destruction, and this is squarely the responsibility of Indonesia's central and provincial authorities to police."

 

Friday October 6, 10:19 AM
The war of fog: industry insists it's fighting Asian haze

As thick haze chokes Southeast Asia and drifts across the Pacific, the pulp and paper industry, blamed for failing to prevent the burning of vast swathes of Indonesian forest, says it's doing its best to fight the scourge.

According to Greenpeace, forest clearing for acacia pulpwood and oil palm plantations is the leading cause of illegal fires and suffocating haze which has closed schools, disrupted air traffic and caused widespread breathing problems.

The annual illegal burn-off in Indonesia, which officials have been accused of doing little to stop, sees acrid smoke billow across the region, with Malaysia, Singapore and southern Thailand usually worst affected.

This week, the haze had also spread 3,600 kilometres (2,250 miles) to smother islands in the western Pacific.

But giant companies like Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd. (APRIL) and Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), among the world's biggest pulp and paper producers, say they are committed to fighting the fires -- even though their plantations keep expanding.

"We use only mechanical methods to clear the land," said Brad Senders, APRIL fire, safety and aviation manager. "We don't want to contribute to the smoke and haze."

Both companies have their headquarters in Singapore and are part of powerful conglomerates -- Sinar Mas for APP, Raja Garuda Mas for APRIL -- controlled by tycoons.

Sukanto Tanoto, boss of Raja Garuda Mas, which has interests in palm oil, construction and energy, was named as the richest man in Indonesia by Forbes Asia magazine last month.

Net plantable areas under APRIL management cover more than 400,000 hectares (nearly a million acres) and the company's mill near this city of Pangkalan Kerinci is the second biggest in the world in terms of designed production capacity.

APRIL uses around 9 million cubic meters (nearly 12 million cubic yards) of wood annually for its yearly production capacity of 2 million tons of pulp. APP capacities are similar.

As of the end of June 2006, APRIL says it has planted about 300,000 hectares of acacia, but still acknowledges that 55 percent of the wood it uses comes from natural forests.

This angers conservationists, who are concerned that rare wildlife, such as Sumatran tigers, Sumatran elephants and birds, face extinction.

"We need the wood as raw material for pulp and paper. Why would we burn it? We do not want charcoal mixed in chips," APRIL's Senders, presenting his team of firefighters which is equipped with a water-dropping helicopter.

Dressed in red overalls and equipped with radio transmitters, their goal is to get to fires within two hours of receiving a report, flying by helicopter equipped with portable water pumps, hoses and axes.

"Since 1996, APP has insisted that its fiber suppliers implement a strict no-burn policy," said company spokeswoman Aida Greenbury.

The company claims to have more than 600 trained fire officers and three full-time fire-suppression helicopters to patrol the forests and control fires.

But environmental groups insist burning is continuing in APRIL and APP concessions.

"We found some evidence that there are hotspots in their concessions and the concessions of their sub-contractors," Rully Syumanda from Walhi, the Indonesian branch of Friends of the Earth, told AFP.

A coalition of three non-government organisations in Sumatra's Riau province asserted that from January to August this year, 8,876 hotspots were detected there.

By associated pulp mill, APP contributed to 745 hotspots and APRIL 523, with the remainder unknown or unidentified groups, the coalition said in September.

"Unfortunately, fires still do occur in APP operating areas," Greenbury concedes.

"These are frequently started illegally by villagers seeking to clear land so that they can plant oil palms, rubber or other crops."

WWF's Indonesian species conservation director Nazir Foead agrees that small companies are enticed to burn.

"For small companies doing palm oil, the best and cheapest way is to set fire. You don't need bulldozers," he said.

 

Anyone has any idea which companies are involved in the burning of vegetation in Indonesia's Southern Sumatra and Kalimantan. The whole world should boycott their product to force them to stop burning. We must pre-empt before they repeat year after year. How can all the governments in this region cannot solve this problem, blaming one another?

 

Lack of equipment, commitment hamper fight against forest fires
August 29, 2006

TheJakartaPost.com - A good intention will not yield results without good implementation, wise men say.

Three months ago President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told his ministers, governors and regents to do their utmost to halt haze-producing forest fires, to spare him the humiliation of once again explaining to ASEAN leaders why the country has failed to handle the situation.

But in his state of the nation address, delivered before the parliament on Aug. 16, Yudhoyono acknowledged that his subordinates seemed to have done nothing to carry out his order.

"We have still seen several occurrences of fires in the last couple of weeks. I really regret this situation," he said.

"It (preventing forest fires) correlates with the responsibility, concern and leadership of regional administrations," he added.

However, Yudhoyono failed to note that curbing the fires calls for more than just the values he cited. Analysts say it takes additional human resources and cash, as well as the commitment to sign an international agreement.

The head of the Central Kalimantan Natural Resources Conservation Office (BKSDA), Yohannes Sudharto, said his team of firefighters was no match for the flames that had occurred in hundreds of places across the province.

"We have only a handful of trained firefighters," he said. "We are outnumbered."

Yohannes' office assembled 15 teams of firefighters in 2000. Each consists of nine men: two from the government and seven from the community. In total, fewer than 150 trained firefighters work in the province.

These men are stacked up against the more than 500 so-called "hot spots" that occur every day during the land-clearing season in July and August.

One hot spot represents roughly 1.1 square kilometers, meaning that thousands of hectares of land have been ravaged since the fires started in July.

"We cannot handle such massive fires with such limited human resources," said Aliansyah, one of the nine BKSDA forest fire fighters who struggled for three days to put out fires that raged on 25 hectares of peat lands in the outskirts of Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan.

He and his colleagues receive Rp 20,000 (about US$2.20) every day when they are on duty plus Rp 180,000 monthly. He said none of the fire fighters were covered by health insurance, however, nor were they equipped with personal protective equipment.

"Well, thank God, so far no-one has gotten injured or sick," said Aliansyah, who has spent nine years fighting forest fires across Borneo.

The Forestry Ministry claims it has deployed some 1,500 fire fighters in eight provinces in Sumatra and Kalimantan, which are prone to annual forest fires.

However, this number also appears sorely insufficient, as satellite images showed more than 10,000 hot spots in Sumatra and Borneo in the last two months.

In Riau, about 120 firefighters have failed to curb a blaze that has been ravaging some 2,000 hectares of land and forests. The fire has destroyed parts of the more than 38,000-hectare Tesso Nillo national park, home to some endangered species of elephants and tigers.

Firefighters have been trying to extinguish the blaze since last month. Realizing they were outnumbered, the Riau provincial administration deployed 600 military personnel to help fight fires in the province.

"They are tasked with dousing the fires and arresting people who illegally clear land," the head of the province's environmental impact management agency, Khairul Zainal, told AFP.

The Forestry Ministry said an additional 375 men would reinforce 1,500 firefighters who have been battling fires in South Sumatra and West Kalimantan.

Yohannes said lack of personnel was not the only problem. His office has only seven pumping machines, of which only three can extract sufficiently large volumes of water.

"It's difficult to find water sources during this dry season. Most of the sewers or wells are shallow, and we can only use the big pumping machines," he said.

The Central Kalimantan arm of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi Kalteng) dismissed such arguments, saying the government and regional administrations had undermined the potential of local communities to help extinguish the fires.

"The government should give local communities, who are mostly farmers, incentives. Not by paying them, but by supporting their agricultural activities, such as subsidizing fertilizers," said Walhi Kalteng director Satriadi.

"That way, they will do anything to keep land and forests from burning," he said.

World Wide Fund for Nature Indonesia senior official Fitrian Ardiansyah suggested that to discourage the use of fire to clear land, the government should assist farmers in clearing their land for each new planting season.

"The farmers are just looking for the cheapest way to clear their land. If they were aware that other environmentally-friendly and cost-effective methods were available, they would be more than happy to stop burning land," said Fitrian, who is WWF's program coordinator for forest restoration and threat mitigation.

Fitrian argued the most important step the government could take was to quickly ratify the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, so that ASEAN members could send support to combat Indonesia's rampant forest fires.

He said Forestry Ministry concerns that the pact would lead to the central government, rather than Indonesia's regional governments, being blamed for the fires, should not be allowed to delay ratification.

"This agreement is the first in the world at the regional level that requires countries to jointly tackle transboundary haze pollution caused by forest and land fires," he said.

Without rejecting that suggestion, Masyhud said the government is upbeat that it can handle the problem.

He said the government has done its best and, with or without neighboring countries' help, it would continue to do its best to put out the fires.

 

Logging companies fingered for forest fires
September 06, 2006

IOL (Independent Online wholly owned subsidiary of Independent News & Media) - Jakarta - An Indonesian environmentalist group has accused more than 100 logging and plantation companies of being involved in forest fires that have sent choking smoke and haze across parts of the South-East Asia, local media reports said Wednesday.

The Indonesian Forum of Environment (Walhi) listed logging companies, industrial timber estates and palm-oil plantations, including Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper, as being behind the annual widespread forest fires in the country.

"They should be held responsible because every year fires occur in their concessions," The Jakarta Post quoted Chalid Muhammad, Walhi's executive director, as saying.

Muhammad said the annual forest fires had destroyed up to 27 million hectares of forests in the country in the past five years.

Thick haze from the fires and cropland burnings have blanketed cities in Sumatra and West Kalimantan province on the Indonesian part of Borneo for the past several weeks, delaying airline flights and causing a health hazard to residents.

Walhi strongly denied claims by senior government officials that nomadic farmers were behind the haze, saying that only 19 percent of the fires occur on privately owned land and outside the firms' concessions.

"The problem is how to get tough with the companies, not to arrest farmers," Muhammad argued.

Meanwhile, the state-run Antara news agency quoted Environmental Minister Rachmad Witular as saying that his office has planned to issue a regulation to seize land cleared through burning of forests.

The annual haze generated in Indonesia is at its worst during the dry season, which runs from July to October.

The choking smoke have frequently affected neighbouring countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Thailand.

Indonesia banned the practice of open field burning in 1999 after widespread fires caused a thick haze to blanket parts of Indonesia and surrounding nations.

Breaking the law could result in up to 10 years in prison and a $1,06-million (about R6-million) fine.

However, enforcement of the law is often lax, activists and experts said, explaining that in addition to corrupt officials turning a blind eye, legal proceedings are also hampered because the country's criminal code requires the police to provide solid proof, such as matches, gasoline and witnesses.

Hundreds of police officers were deployed last week to help extinguish raging fires in Riau in efforts that included dropping water bombs and creating manmade rain. - Sapa-dpa