The last week has been a hectic refresher of life in Indonesia.
I’m feeling a little worried about heading into a smoke cloud with a combined area larger than The United Kingdom and France together. It hangs menacing over Sumatra and Kalimantan, wafting as air currents circulate, bounding into the news when the edges swing through Singapore. People living in it are forced to endure conditions of up to 1000 PSI (the pollution standards index, which is calculated based upon the concentrations of toxic gases and particles in the air), three times the level considered hazardous.
The simple answer is that the forests and peat are on fire, which is an annual occurrence during the dry season. Technically though, it’s not the dry season any more. What appears to be one of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded is unfolding in the Pacific, which has global consequences. In Indonesia, it’s main effect is an extended dry season; so far almost no rain has fallen in two months. In combination with scorching tropical temperatures this creates a huge potential for fire.
In most other places in the world people would be extra vigilant, trying to prevent their land from burning but in Indonesia fire is a tool to clear land and now there’s a chance to clear lots of it.
Following the fall of Suharto and the devolution of power to local governments (autonomy daera) an opportunity has arrived for local people to acquire land and exhausted selective logging concessions are easy targets. People move in, in organised groups, often funded by investors, and set up camp. Semi-permanent houses (pondoks) pop up in no time and then they get to work. Any trees of value are felled, chopped into boards and taken to market, often by motorbike; the scrub is cut and piled up to wait for an opportunity like now.
As the fuel load (the amount of dry material) builds up the fires start by the thousand. Where they occur on peat land they spread beneath the surface and are extremely difficult to put out. In 1997 the dry season fires in Indonesia contributed to 25% of global carbon emissions for the year. Just take a moment and try and get your head around that.
Land ownership is tenuous. The fire starters may have been sold the land by someone, but there is often no centralised record of the sale. They have a letter from a local politician or village leader who claims ownership through right. This may well be supported at higher levels of local government and perhaps even the police. The movement of money keeps everything moving.
So when it comes to clamping down and stopping fires, action comes slowly. There is an interest in clearing the land for development, and how else will it be cleared?
Fingers are pointed at the companies who may be responsible for land management but all they can do is try, without the help of a national fire service, or action from the police to stop their reignition once they are put out.
The sad thing is that the peat has an enormous financial value. It represents a huge store of carbon that we, the world, want to keep locked up. But it also represents a huge store of energy. If Indonesia wanted to burn peat to produce electrity it could, and it would make a lot. For some context, Indonesia is hoping to transition to producing 30% of it’s domestic power supply from biofuels. The amount of carbon locked up in peat would outstrip that sequestered from oil palm production by an order of magnitude (I haven’t done the math).
Now I’m not advocating this but what I am saying is there is an opportunity cost here. Allowing people to burn peat, convert forest to oil palm and produce a biofuel means deleting a huge national and international asset so that an inferior asset can be produced. The only winners here are small holders, who I expect would take other opportunities if they were available.
So is there a solution? I’m a perpetual optimist, so yes there is but it won’t be easy. If the international community really wants to stop global warming, we need to step up carbon financing in a big way. Peat forest needs to stay peat forest and we need to pay for it. At present international development money to stop deforestation is about 1% that of the amount of money given out by the two biggest deforesters (Indonesia and Brazil) every year as subsidies for forest conversion. This can only be done with the collaboration of the Indonesian government to put a lot more pressure on local governments, by holding them accountable for deforestation and burning in their jurisdictions.
The issue of social welfare is perhaps the real root cause. At the time of the 2014 election in Indonesia both leading parties offered millions of hectares of land as a solution to raise people out of poverty. And Indonesia is predominantly an agrarian economy, so it’s not surprising they’re taking it. But real reform of the economy is needed to provide jobs in secondary and tertiary industries to simultaneously lift people out of poverty and combat land transformation.
One hundred million hectares (an area even bigger than the smoke cloud) of exhausted forest concessions exist in South East Asia that have potential for restoration. If we carry on down the road we’re on at present these forests will not be restored, they will be converted. In the next decade alone South East Asia is expecting the addition of 600 million people to its population. Where are they going to live? What will be their livelihoods? The global population is a growing problem.
Most people I know are critical of carbon credits but they have real potential. They enable us as consumers to transfer funds to some of the poorest people in the world, trough mechanisms such as REDD+, but who has even heard of this let alone done it? Carbon markets, so far have not matured (supply outstrips demand), making such schemes very expensive to implement relative to the amount of funds generated. To make some meaningful change we all need to take this a lot more seriously.
If you’ve never bought carbon credits, but are interested to offset some of your consumption. I suggest looking into supporting the Harapan Rainforest in Sumatra, which is not an accredited carbon project but is a very worthwhile cause. Donations can be made via the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. If anyone has experience with buying carbon credits please let me know as I would be keen to share the information.
