IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature

Why was Indonesia unprepared for the inferno of 1997-98, despite a history of catastrophic fires over the last decade? Peter Moore and Effendy Sumardja identify the main forces at play, and suggest ways to prevent future blazes.

The extreme drought associated with the strong El Niño climatic influence of 1997/98 set up ideal fire conditions in Southeast Asia. But El Niño had a lot of help: the majority of Indonesia's most recent fires were deliberately set. They soon went completely out of control, resulting in wildfires that surpassed any nation's fire fighting capabilities. The fires have had profound impacts on the economic, physical, social, and natural environment of the ASEAN Region. They consumed millions of tonnes of biomass, destroyed physical infrastructure such as buildings and bridges, affected industrial production, disrupted commerce, reduced tourism revenues to a trickle, and did long-term damage to the health and livelihoods of some 70 million people in six countries. More than 40,000 people were hospitalized for respiratory and other smoke-related -ailments. This one fire episode alone caused hundreds of deaths, devastated some nine million hectares of forest and cost US$10 billion in direct ecological and -economic losses.

Since 1982, large-scale forest exploitation and conversion activities in Sumatra and Kalimantan have led to a rapid increase in fire hazard. Inappropriate logging and land-clearing methods, carried out mostly by agro-industrial companies and transmigration projects, have left a patchwork of degraded forest cover that burns easily. Land acquisition by large companies without sufficient consideration for the rights of local people has led to land -disputes, which are often solved or avenged through fire.

The impact of these practices has been aggravated by inadequate infrastructure, unclear policies, weak legislation, and - unenforced and ineffectual regulations. Finally, the Asian Economic Crisis caused a resource crunch that made things worse: funding, facilities, trained personnel, and incentives for community participation were withheld; fire prevention and protection measures were kept to a minimum. Under these conditions, the prevention and containment of fires was impossible.

Fire has always been present in the landscape of Southeast Asia, and is an important and predictable phenomenon in many forest ecosystems. Indeed, the proper functioning of fire-adapted forest ecosystems depends on the occasional fire. 'Natural' fires, by definition, rarely do such profound damage that the forest is unable to recover. It is widely agreed that human activities have been associated with nearly all the recent fires in Indonesia, either as a direct cause or by setting up the conditions which allow them to spread out of control. The resulting 'unnatural' damage has proved so profound that some forest ecosystems may be unable to recover within our children's lifetimes.

What went wrong? Given its previous -experiences with severe fires, and an early warning system that effectively identified the potential problems, why was Indonesia - and the world - unprepared for the fires of 1997-98?

We already know the basic ingredients for successful fire prevention and management at local, and perhaps regional, levels. Innovative projects, designed to involve local communities and achieve practical results, have shown the way. Missions, workshops and conferences have analysed the major causes and characteristics of fires in Indonesia. Strategic and organisational issues along with aspects of governance have been framed by experts, practitioners and those directly involved.

But if the way ahead is fairly clear, getting there can be difficult. Creating a participatory atmosphere and collective enthusiasm for fire prevention and early warning systems can be difficult, and requires pervasive public awareness. Fire danger rating systems based on huge stores of data are not going to help if the people on the ground want the fires to burn, or show no interest in putting them out. Sophisticated remote sensing technology for fire prediction and monitoring comes to naught when forest guards have no shoes and little incentive due to very low salaries (US$20 per month).

Today's expensive technological fixes are out of balance with the equally important 'dirty' fieldwork: little is being done to resolve the land use conflicts which cause many fires, or to strengthen the capability of field offices and concession units, or to address the issue of post-fire forest -rehabilitation.

Fire management in Indonesia seems to have become 'donor-dominated', with many overlapping and redundant activities. In response to the most recent fires, some 35 studies and projects have been proposed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), World Resources Institute (WRI) and IUCN, among others. Four continuing long-term projects have been initiated by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), European Union (EU), the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ) and the International Tropical Timber organisation (ITTO). While some of these conferences, workshops and reports are necessary, many fail to add value and stimulate activity to address the real problems and underlying causes of the fires in Indonesia.

The process of fire management in -Indonesia - and elsewhere - should be turned on its head. The first step should be for Governments, agencies and civil society to define their prevention and fire fighting needs and design projects to address those needs; only then should funding be sought from donors. Too often, needs are being defined or dictated from the outside - according to the priorities of the donors and international organisations, however well-meaning. Donor contributions should build on existing experience to achieve practical results and improvements at the field level, supply appropriate equipment, and train crews. The key to controlling forest fires is to devote more energy to spreading the prevention message. An effective prevention stimulates the understanding that it makes sense to improve fire-fighting capacity. Every time the onset of the rainy season extinguishes the forest fires, the public profile of the issue wanes, and politics goes back to business as usual - thus preparing the ground for renewed fires during the next dry spell. Improving the focus on prevention in Asia will increase the likelihood that forest fires do not leave the political radar screen, and that a longer-lasting solution to the destructive combination of human and contextual triggers is found.

The opportunity presented by the transition to a democratic regime in Indonesia is significant. There is great potential for addressing the social conflicts underlying the fires and for reviewing the roles and -responsibilities of government agencies in light of a new government's policy platform. This chance should be grasped by government and civil society, and strongly encouraged by all external actors as part of the solution to this burning issue.

Peter Moore is Director of Metis Associates in Killara, Australia and was the Coordinator of Project FireFight South East Asia.

Effendy Sumardja is WCPA - SEA Vice Chair and Deputy for Law Enforcement and Environmental Impact Assessment in the Agency for Environmental Impact Management (Bapedal).

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