FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA

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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Impacts, Factors and Evaluation
Dr.T.Lukman Aziz Department Geodetic
Engineering The Institute of Technology, Bandung
(ITB) Jl.Ganesa 10 Bandung - Indonesia Tilp/Fax.
62 22 250 1116 E-Mail lukmanaz_at_indo.net.id Shik
oku - Japan, November 1998
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Background
? Forest resources are the backbones of the
Indonesian economy ? Fire is a part of the
seasonal landscape in Indonesia the scale
and intensity vary considerably from year to
year ? Ministry of Forestry statistics the
scale of the forest fire range roughly from
6,700 (1985) to 161,800 (1994) hectares per
year ? The impacts of the fires is also spread
to neighboring nations throughout
Southeast Asia. For example, the haze severely
affected Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Background
? Regionally , losses incurred by Indonesia,
Malaysia, and Singapore are believed to
have reached US4.4 billion (WWF,1998) ?
Indonesia began putting in place several
mechanisms and policies to prevent and
mitigate forest fire. At least two
institutions specifically designed to handle
forest fire, namely National Center for
Forest Fire Control (1994) and the National
Co-ordination Team for Land Fire (1995).
Yet this institutions were unable to prevent the
1997 fires
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
The 1997 Fires
? Occurred in 25 provinces ? the provinces most
severely affected were South Kalimantan,
Central Kalimantan, West Kalimantan, South
Sumatera and Jambi
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Indonesia
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Impact of The Forest Fires 1997
? The Burned Area ? the official figure
1997 838,869.21 hectares (State
Ministry of Environment) ? the 1998 fires
estimated at around 507,239.5 ha
(Kompas news paper)
? Impact on Physical Environment ? Air
quality ? Forest Functions, Hydrological
Cycle and Biological Diversity
disruption of natural succession, disruption of
the production and decomposition of
organic materials, impact on soils,
disruption in the nutrient cycle, hydrological
cycle, climate regulation and carbon
sink, impact on bio-diversity
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Impact of The Forest Fires 1997
? Social Impact ? Food security
Rice self-sufficiency is an important factor in
diversified rural economies. Most of
rural communities attach a great deal
to dryland rice cultivation. This year the
harvests were very poor due to climate
condition (drought) and other factors
such as rats, wild pig, deer whose own food
supplies were destroyed by fire.
Wildlife population also severely
depleted due to direct death by burning.
Table 1. (in the following slide) shows some
statistics figure,
based on survey in three villages in East
Kalimantan, West Kalimantan
and Central Kalimantan
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Impact of The Forest Fires 1997
? Social Impact Table 1. Statistics Figure on
Food security
1 repondent whose rice harvest failed 2
repondent who were out of rice by July 1998 3
repondent who have never had to buy rice before
1998 4 repondent who listed pests as a factor
in poor harvest
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Impact of The Forest Fires 1997
? Social Impact ? Loss of Assets and
Income For villages suffering from rice
shortages, cash income is vital in
order to purchase food. Also needed to buy
medicine as case of haze related
illness (including the death of small
child who was coughing up blood). For natural
resource dependent communities, the
fire have depleted their saving
account, leaving them without the means to buy
food, shelter, clothing or medicine.
Table 2. (in the following slide) shows
some statistics figure,
based on survey in three villages in
East Kalimantan, West Kalimantan and
Central Kalimantan
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Impact of The Forest Fires 1997
? Social Impact Table 2. Statistics figure on
Loss of Assets and Income
1 Total Assets lost 2 Total Real Income Lost 3
Average Household Real Income Lost All figures
are quote in US
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Impact of The Forest Fires 1997
? Social Impact ? Loss of Shelter
Houses destroyed by fire must be replaced
with bought timber. However, wood for
construction is not available because
distracted by fire and result of palm
concessions acquiring and clearing
locally useful timber sources ? Survival
Strategies Communities employ a number
of survival strategies to get them
through tough times. Some people have left their
villages seeking wage labor elsewhere.
This reduced amount of labor available
for agriculture activities and reduced
agriculture production .
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Impact of The Forest Fires 1997
? Social Impact ? Disruption of Social
Well-being The impact of the fires and
the subsequent losses have had deep
and long-lasting effect on the communities. This
expressed by deep feelings of chaos
and injustice, desperation and hopelessness. The
villages felt that life is now out of
balance. The losses were not just
monetary or physical, but a loss of unity and
safety in their lives. ? Predication for
Future Impacts Most of the local
people can provide a valuable means of
predicting of what is in store for rural
communities in the year to come. Pest
and weeds severely reduced harvests for several
years following the fires. Wild pigs
become more aggressive and people gave
up on trying to combat them. Rats and monkeys
also became terrible nuisances. These
provide solid evidence of a profound and
lasting impact of wide-spread fires on rural
livelihoods and rural welfare
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Impact of The Forest Fires 1997
? Impact on Health ? Particularly the
poor, the aged, pregnant mothers and under
five-year-old children ? Disease
bronchial asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, eye and
skin irritation ? Economic Impact
? Losses in the Agriculture Sector, Forestry
? Transmigration, Transportation, Tourism
? Fire control Cost, Ecology
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Factor Affecting Forest Fires
? Different Types of Fires ? Fire from
land clearance ? Unintentional Fires
? Arson
? Social Factors ? Many actors and factors
influence forest fire ? Actors
government, industries, and communities
? Factors belief, knowledge, awareness,
attitudes, and
behavior
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Factor Affecting Forest Fires
? Social Factors - lessons learned ?
The main social factor at play is the attitude
of the stakeholders, simplified
as the government, private
business sector and the community ? At
the government level, there is a lack of sense
of urgency and political
commitment to prevent and manage
forest fire ? Companies ignore their
social and ecological
responsibilities
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Factor Affecting Forest Fires
? Social Factors - lessons learned ?
At community level, conflict of land ownership
leads to arson practices that
cause fire. A source of conflict is
land appropriation by large concession
companies and the lack of
recognition of traditional laws over resources
? Erosion of traditional knowledge and
practices on safe burning of
land, as result of erosion in community
cohesiveness ? The
stakeholders do not realize the importance of
climate information all ignored
early warning of El Nino by
meteorological agency at the end of 1996
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Factor Affecting Forest Fires
? Information System and Communications ?
No supporting data maps, image, aerial photo,
geographic information. If available,
the procedures to access it are tedious.
As a result, both fire locations and the area of
forest affected are not known.
? It is therefore APAN real time data is very
much needed ? At the field level,
personnel do not have enough equipment
and vehicles to conduct fire prevention and
management. ? The Army could play an
important role because they are all
well equipped
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Factor Affecting Forest Fires
? Economy ? Incentive and disincentives
for Business ? Production and Investment
target ? Insinuative and disincentives to
Local Communities ? Funding for Fire
Prevention ? Technology ? Land
Clearance ? Timber Production ?
Cultivation System and Reforestation ? Ecology
? Vegetation Type and Composition ?
Hydrological System ? Soil Content ?
Climate El Nino
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Concluding Remarks
? APAN Role ?
? The weakness in existing fire danger
prediction method is that the social
aspects and human interaction with the
environment have not been considered. This
evident should be improved in near future.
? The use of APAN real time data and
networking should be considered as an
effort toward the improvement of fire
information management
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FOREST FIRE IN INDONESIA
Concluding Remarks
? APAN Role ?
? There is no systematic effort to gather and
to process pre and post fire data and
information. This is because the concern for
fires had reduced, aggravated by the
economic crisis ? The support from APAN
member to provide fire data and
information will help the systematic
processes
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