THE fires that have raged across Indonesia since late July and choked much of Southeast Asia can largely be blamed on the Indonesian government鈥檚 land clearance policies. So claim scientists who have worked on field projects in the region.
As the pall of smog continues to hang over Southeast Asia, Indonesia鈥檚 President Suharto has apologised to neighbouring countries for the pollution. But scientists who work in the country claim that these are empty words. 鈥淭he fires are a result of government policy,鈥� says Jack Rieley, a botanist at the University of Nottingham.
Rieley is studying biological diversity in the massive peat swamps of Kalimantan, the Indonesian territory on the island of Borneo. He says the fires are linked to massive government-sponsored land clearance projects. 鈥淭here is a hidden agenda not to stop the burning,鈥� says Rieley. 鈥淭he fires will continue every year.鈥�
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One project, launched last year under what local papers called Suharto鈥檚 鈥渄irect supervision鈥�, aims to clear forest for rice paddies from an area the size of Northern Ireland southeast of the city of Palangkaraya.
Government targets required the clearance of some 40 000 hectares of forest this year, and fire is the only practical method. 鈥淎fter the valuable timber, such as ramin, is cut down, the forests are just burned,鈥� says Susan Page at the University of Leicester, a colleague of Rieley鈥檚.
David Wall, a British researcher based in Jakarta who heads a European Union programme to improve the management of Indonesia鈥檚 forest, adds: 鈥淚n the last two or three years there has been an explosion of land clearing in Kalimantan and Sumatra for large-scale agricultural and forestry plantations. Use of fire for clearing has been banned by the President since August, but it still goes on merrily.鈥�
Researchers working for the EU have found that some fires were started by farmers aggrieved that land they had farmed was taken over by plantation owners, many of whom were given land concessions as part of government development projects. 鈥淔rom village studies, we have found that a significant number of fires are set deliberately during land disputes,鈥� says Wall.
Reports suggest that the fires are spreading across most of the major islands of Indonesia. In most years the fires would be out by now. But the seasonal rains have been delayed by the periodic climatic phenomenon known as El Ni帽o, which causes a long drought season in the Western Pacific. Major forest fires occurred in the region during the El Ni帽os of 1983, 1991 and 1994.
Part of the EU forestry aid programme, which began in 1995, covers fire prevention and control. But it has done little to hold back this year鈥檚 inferno. One project, pinpointing fire 鈥渉otspots鈥� using satellite images, has come completely unstuck. 鈥淭he haze is so thick now that the hotspots are obscured,鈥� says Wall.
Another strategy is to reduce the spread of fires by encouraging farmers to remove combustible crop residues from their fields after harvest. 鈥淲e have proposed things like making compost and cultivating mushrooms,鈥� says the project head, John Makin of the Natural Resources Institute in Chatham, Kent. But after two years, the project has yet to run a pilot scheme.
As people across Southeast Asia pray for rain, scientists warn that the smoke will delay any rainfall. Paul Crutzen, the Nobel prizewinning atmospheric chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, told New 杏吧原创: 鈥淭he smoke particles will probably suppress precipitation.鈥� First, the soot will create clouds with more, but smaller, water droplets, a type from which rain rarely falls. Second, the soot particles may warm the clouds, making them evaporate.
