May 29th, 1998
Singapore.- The Indonesian forest fires of 1997 resulted in over US$3
billion in damages, according to a study released today by the Economy
and Environment Program for SE Asia (EEPSEA) and the World Wide
Fund For Nature (WWF). When added toEEPSEA/WWF's February
estimate of haze damage, the total costs exceed $4.4 billion. According
to EEPSEA Director David Glover, "This is more than the damages
assessed for the Exxon Valdez oil spill and India's Bhopal chemical spill
combined. The resources lost would have been more than enough to
provide basic sanitation, water and sewage services for Indonesia's 120
million rural poor". The authors point out that the figures are
conservative, and do not take into account loss of life, possible long-term
health effects, or the full value of lost biodiversity.
The principal damages include $493 million in timber losses; $470 million in
foregone agricultural production; $1.8 billion in ecological services
provided to people by forests (foods and medicine, water supply,
erosion control, and others); and $272 million for the contribution to global
warming from release of carbon. While global warming will be felt by the
rest of the world, the other fire damages were suffered mainly by
Indonesia itself. Estimates for area burned were derived from satellite
mapping studies of Sumatra and Kalimantan by the National University of
Singapore's Centre for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing (CRISP),
with adjustments by EEPSEA and WWF for areas burned outside those
provinces. These were then combined with per hectare values for
various vegetation types and land uses.
"The tragedy is that these fires were largely preventable", said WWF
Forest Conservation Adviser Togu Manurung. "Tropical rainforests don't
burn easily, even under drought conditions. Indonesian forests have
been degraded by years of poor forestry practices - that's why they are
so susceptible to fires set by people." According to Timothy Jessup,
WWF's Senior Policy Adviser in Jakarta, the fires were promoted by a
series of poorly designed policies including:
- a programme to drain and convert 1 million hectares of peat forest to
rice cultivation. Fires on these former wetlands have been the most
difficult to extinguish and created haze laden with sulphuric acid;
- unclear land ownership laws that encourage people and companies to
clear land as a way of staking a claim. These are combined with weak
enforcement of laws to regulate the use of fire for land clearing;
- policies that keep the prices of wood supplied to processing mills low,
providing little incentive to protect standing timber or to sell scrap wood
rather than burn it;
- short term leases of forest land to timber companies, which leave
them with little incentive to manage forests sustainably;
"Changing these policies should be front and centre in the new
government's reform programme," said Jessup.
Land clearing by fire for planting of oil palm and timber caused up to
80% of the 1997 fires. Another recent WWF study shows that no-burn
methods for land clearing are a promising option, although their
environmental impacts also need to be assessed.
The EEPSEA/WWF report does not predict damages from fires in 1998.
By taking action now, it says, the Indonesian Government could avoid a
disaster on the scale of 1997.
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A summary of the report, including detailed figures and estimation
methods, can be seen on the EEPSEA & WWF Websites or obtained from
either organization. A book-length report will be published in September
1998. For additional information, contact:
EEPSEA: David Glover, Director
Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia
7th Storey, RELC Bldg., 30 Orange Grove, Singapore 258352
E-mail: dglover@idrc.org.sg Fax: 65 235 1849
Tel: 65 831 6854 (direct); 65 235 1344 (s'brd); 65 466 8856 (after hours)
Website: www.idrc.org.sg/eepsea
WWF: Timothy Jessup, Senior Policy Adviser
World Wide Fund for Nature, Indonesia
PO Box 7928 JKSKM, Jakarta 112079, Indonesia
E-mail: tjessup@wwfnet.org Fax: 62 21 739 5907
Tel: 62 21 720 3095 / 724 5766 / 735 6501
Website: www.panda.org