New York Times, September 27, 1997Asia's Forest Disaster
The thick smoke spreading throughout Southeast Asia apparently claimed 234 more lives on Friday, when an Indonesian airliner lost its way in the haze and crashed.
The smoke, coming from forest fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the Indonesian part of Borneo, now blankets Singapore, Brunei and parts of Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.
The fires are accelerated by drought but were set by man. In its headlong rush to cut down its timber and sell it, Asia has saddled itself with the worst deforestation problem of any continent. Environmentalists have long warned of the consequences. Asian leaders have dismissed the critics as subversives inspired by the West to try to stop Southeast Asia's dazzling economic growth. But while previous fires have not persuaded governments to halt deforestation, Asia's leaders should now realize that growth is fleeting when based on the wanton destruction of natural resources.
The Indonesian Government has attributed previous fires to farmers clearing their land for crops. This time, because the fires have been burning for months and satellite data is being made public, the Government has been forced to acknowledge that the fires coincide mainly with areas of commercial logging on Borneo and Sumatra.
Indigenous farmers use the same environmentally sound farming methods they have for centuries, rotating between plots of family land.
The problem is the logging companies, which often show up unannounced, cut the trees, burn the stumps and set up plantations of oil palms or
eucalyptus and acacia trees for paper and pulp -- usually all without
compensating the farmers.
To compound the tragedy, the precious tropical hardwood is then turned into virtual garbage.
Most of it is milled into plywood and particle board, largely used in
Japanese construction sites as a disposable mold for concrete.
About 10 percent of Indonesia's plywood comes to North America, where it is used in construction and cheap shelving.
The export of logs is illegal in Indonesia, so they are milled first. The plywood trade is a cartel controlled by Mohamad (Bob) Hasan, a billionaire who is President Suharto's golf partner. Though the Government has vowed to prosecute the companies that set the fires, the record is not promising. Loggers can pay local forestry officials to look the other way, and powerful friends of the Suharto family have remarkably few legal problems.
Indonesia is not alone. Deforestation is more pronounced on the Malaysian part of Borneo, and is widespread in Cambodia, Thailand and other countries. In Indonesia, however, the devastation of commercial logging is compounded by the Government's policy of subsidizing migration, which until 1986 was supported by the World Bank. Farmers from the crowded island of Java are encouraged to move to the forests of Borneo and Sumatra.
Unfortunately, they bring their old techniques, which do not work outside Java's rich volcanic soil and are eating up the forest.
Some good can come of these tragic fires if they persuade Southeast Asia and the nations that import their products to take forest protection seriously. The United States should begin by banning plywood made of tropical hardwood, or requiring country-of-origin labeling on wood products so consumers can refuse to buy them. Japan, often the buyer of products created by ruinous environmental practices, also needs to rethink its import policies. In the end, however, Southeast Asia's environmental practices will not greatly improve until corruption and authoritarianism diminish. There is too much money to be made by powerful people, and too little attention paid to those groups trying to bring sanity to reckless growth.
Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company
None.
