The Impacts of Annual Forest Fires in Indonesia

Dyani Masita Dewi – 12613745

Gunadarma University Faculty of Letters

Abstract

Forest is a place where human and animals depend on. It has a great role in life as an
oxygen producer, natural food store and habitat for many trees and animals. Indonesia's
lowland tropical forests, the richest in timber resources and biodiversity, is most at risk.
Every year, land and forest fire become a big problem and was impacted to the activities,
health and safety of the living things, not only in Indonesia but also for other countries. It
happened because of the natural and human-made causes. Need more than just help from
the government to prevent and solve this incident, but also people’s awareness and
actions.

Key words: Indonesia’s forest, land fire, forest fire in Indonesia

1. Introduction

As this year’s dry season approaches, the fires are just started to pick up, especially in
the fire-prone province of Riau in Sumatra. According to NASA’s Active Fire Data on the
Global Forest Watch Fires (GFW Fires) platform, half of the fire alerts in Riau are occurring
in protected areas or those where new development is prohibited under Indonesia’s national
forest moratorium.

Indonesia’s forest land comprises 60 % of the country’s land area, which makes it the
third largest area of tropical rainforest in the world. It is important not only for the national
economy and local livelihoods, but also for the global environment. The Indonesian
rainforests are also among the worlds’ richest in terms of biodiversity, and cover a significant
proportion of the planet’s tropical deep peat. That is why it becomes a great problem when
many spots of Indonesia’s forest are burned, naturally or on purpose.

This annual phenomenon gives interest to the writer to do a research related to it.
Hence the writer decided to analyze what and how this phenomenon happened in Indonesia.
People have to understand the importance of forests and their role in life. This study aims to
find the reason and give awareness to the people about the dangerous of land lost.
2. Theoretical Framework

Fire is a frightening element and to be involved in a great forest fire out of control is
an experience that few people would want to relieve (Show:1953). Gomez (2009) stated that
a forest fire is any uncontrolled, non-structure fire that occurs in the wilderness. Forest fire
gives a big disadvantage to people around and the habitat inside it. Wildlife behavior is often
complex and variably dependent on factors such as fuel type, moisture content in the fuel,
humidity, wind speed, topology, geographic location and ambient temperature
(Gomez:2009). The point is that the fire and haze problem in Indonesia is complicated, with
multiple “agents” behind it. Focusing on the concessions that the Indonesian government and
also non-government organizations will do but not going to do much to decrease the problem.

3. Research Methodology

Research method used in this research is descriptive qualitative method. The research
refers to the type of research question, design, and data analysis that will be applied to a
given topic. The writer has done the library research, to find out article, books, and journal
that would support the study.

4. Discussion and Analysis

Forest fire is a serious problem especially in Indonesia, the country that has massive
area of forest. Sumatera and Borneo share a general forest type that is commonly known as
tropical rain forest (Glover, 2006). The highest rates of deforestation happened in Riau,
which is one of the top producers of palm oil and timber in Indonesia. That is why this
phenomenon, even though it happened in Indonesia, influenced the countries around. During
2013-2014, fires in Indonesia brought about a haze crisis in Sumatra, Malaysia and
Singapore, sparking a call for greater accountability from companies and the Indonesia
government and resulting in Indonesia signing the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary
Haze Pollution.

The causes of forest fire in Indonesia

According to WWF Indonesia’s Forest Fire Coordinator, Dedi Hariri, the main cause
of forest fire comes from human factors due to several different activities including the
conversion of land for farming and plantations. Such illegal fires started in peat land and
forest on Indonesia's Sumatra and Borneo Island to quickly and cheaply clear land for palm
oil and pulp and paper plantations. Most of Indonesia is suited to palm oil cultivation, and
there are vast lands available that could be converted to plantation (Inoue, 2013:23). They
increased in number as the plantations expanded, in particular due to rising global demand for
palm oil, a key ingredient in everyday goods such as shampoo and biscuits. Besides the arson
committed by workers of the oil palm company, there were also villagers who set other
people's gardens on fire. Some of them do this because induced by the relatively big sums of
compensation money. In cases where people wanted to 'sell' their gardens to the company,
gardens of people who did not want to 'sell' but whose land was in-between were sometimes
burned in order to provide access for the company.

The other reasons this incident happened annually in Indonesia are:

a. Slash and burn by the farmers has been extensively used for many years as the
cheapest and easiest means to clear the lands for traditional agriculture.
b. Large plantations with poor Environmental, Health and Safety practices have
thousands of employees who may behave in unsafe ways.
c. Incidental fires
Fires also occur incidentally by discarded cigarette butts or escaping camp fires. A
simple test proved that a glowing cigarette could cause a forest fire.
Why is it still happening after all these years?

Although starting fires to clear land is punishable by long jail terms and heavy fines in
Indonesia, law enforcement is weak and corruption rife. Major companies have "zero burn"
policies, meaning they have vowed not to clear land using fires. But activists are skeptical
that all firms are sticking to their pledges, and small landowners have also been blamed for
starting fires to clear land.

The effects on daily life

a. Dry peat smolders for long periods and burns down to the water table. When this
happens, tree roots are exposed and both the peat and forest vegetation become
unstable, resulting in peat erosion, massive tree falls and the consequent loss of large
areas of forest

b. PSF (Indonesian peat-lands and peat-swamp forest) trees are not adapted to fire
because most of them have very thin bark, so tree mortality post-fire is high. Although
fires are generally low intensity, their slow spread rate means fire is in contact with
trees for long periods, heating up the bark

c. Animals dependent on intact PSF will clearly be impacted directly by fire, but other
effects are also likely; for example, gibbons (Hylobates albibarbis) sing less
frequently in smoky conditions, which could interfere with territorial spacing and,
ultimately, reproduction (Cheyne, 2007).

d. This year, air quality has hit hazardous levels, tens of thousands have contracted
respiratory illnesses, many flights have been cancelled and schools closed. From
Indonesia, the smog is blown over Southeast Asia, and fouls the air in neighboring
Singapore and Malaysia. Schools were closed in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur
and neighboring states on Tuesday, while dense clouds have shrouded the skyline of
financial hub Singapore.

e. Global warming. The massive carbon emissions from peat fires make them a major
contributor to the global increase in atmospheric CO2.
5. Conclusion

Prevention is always better than cure. But solutions must be found in order to
maintain suitable agricultural or grazing activities. The issue of Indonesia’s forest fires, a
local problem that has global consequences because of the impact on carbon emissions, needs
to be approached both from a bottom-up and a top-down perspective.

Unfortunately, work in this annual case is not easy. In a culture where people set fires
for food, for money, for hunting and just for fun, it is hard to change behavior. Indonesia
needs regional and local political leadership to simultaneously adopt a zero-tolerance policy
to forest fires while at the same time providing more sustainable economic opportunities.

One of the most fatal feedbacks was the relation between fires and emotions. Whatever the
actual fire cause was, person who has lost their resources to a forest fire consider the cause of
this disaster to other actors (personal enemies, the oil palm company), which often results in
new revenge fires. The trigger of this circle however, was the oil palm company which
destabilized the local setting to the level that the farmers had never experienced before. Thus
to make this incident not go on more, people should done few things. The core elements of
such an approach must include:

 Supporting research to improve the understanding of forest fires and their ecology,
ecological and social costs and benefits, causes and management options.
 Building awareness amongst policy-makers, the public and the media of the
underlying causes of catastrophic forest fires.
 Involving local communities and land managers in management planning and
implementation, assisting them to participate effectively.
 Developing and enforcing compatible and mutually reinforcing land-use laws that
provide a legal basis for the ecologically appropriate use of fire.
 Discouraging land management practices that predispose forests to harmful fires.
 Establishing reliable fire monitoring systems that provide early warning of high fire
risk and fire occurrence, and include evaluation of ecological and human impacts of
fire.
 Preventing further forest loss and degradation, and also reduce fire risk in forested
landscapes, through ecologically appropriate restoration.
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