We are not angry enough! Part 3 – Who will stop Southeast Asia’s forest fires?

Unless they are doctored, high-resolution satellite images of hotspots are rarely inaccurate. Many of these hotspots appear on or adjoining oil palm concessions and pulp plantation forests.

It is therefore a credible argument that the forest fires in Indonesia were deliberately started and serve to benefit large companies, state-owned companies and smallholders involved in the palm oil and forest industries.

Walhi, Indonesia’s leading environmental advocacy group, recently produced a report “regarding the alleged involvement of 262 corporate entities in forest and land fires (karhutla) that occurred in eight provinces across Indonesia”.

The group identified “a number of hotspots with a high confidence level, with at least 10 identified hotspots located within the companies’ concession areas – both in areas controlled by holders of Right-to-Use (HGU) permits and holders of Forest Utilization Business Permits (PBPH)”.

Walhi tried to present its report to the Ministry of the State Secretariat on 11  September but unfortunately failed as “there was no one available to receive it”.

Adding further credence to oil palm companies being complicit in these wildfires was another recent research report by Greenpeace Indonesia & Malaysia, and Pantau Gambut. It “set out comprehensively how the global market drive for palm oil commodities and the forestry industry continues to perpetuate the crisis of forest and land fires (karhutla) on peatland in Indonesia”.

The report ‘When clean air is sacrificed for global commodities’ also linked major oil palm and pulp companies domiciled in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore to the recent forest fires in Indonesia. It made insightful if painful reading especially as it suggests that many of the fires occurred on the same company concessions and repeatedly over the years.

Put differently, the health of millions of Southeast Asians – especially those in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore – are effectively being undermined, ruined and eventually harvested by the annual haze.

It is a malevolent and criminal occurrence perpetuated by the implicated oil palm and forest industry companies, state-owned companies and smallholders in Indonesia and Malaysia, who care for nothing except raw profits.

Indonesia and Asean

The satellite hotspot photos and the haze are evidence that the Indonesian government has done too little too late to prevent and stop the fires. The costs include the destruction of forests, the despoiling of environmental functions, the loss of biodiversity, and damage to human health and the economy.

Considering that the haze is a problem of more than 30 years, one is constrained to conclude that Indonesia has, at worst, a consistently failed government.

At best, it is a government captured by big oil palm and forest industry interests that is inimical to the concerns of Indonesia’s forests, biodiversity, environment and people.

This annual haze from the annual wildfires also calls into question the effectiveness of Asean’s Transboundary Haze Treaty and the raison d’être of Asean itself. The treaty was signed in 2002 and ratified by all Asean member states by 2015. Yet it is plainly ineffective.

Despite its diplomatic words and flowery articles, Asean and its member governments stand idly by. The fires rage unabated, the forests destroyed, the haze poisons and human lives are harvested annually, with worse to come as we age. In other words, the haze also reflects how worthless Asean is as an organisation to ordinary Southeast Asians.

Are we angry enough?

Most importantly, what these forest fires and the annual haze tell us is that Southeast Asians – especially those in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore – are not angry enough.

We are not angry enough about the destruction of our forests, our biodiversity and our environment.

We are not angry enough about the slow snuffing out of our health and the harvesting of our lives and those of our families and loved ones by the annual haze.

And we are not angry enough to vote out our self-serving politicians and corporate-compromised governments in exchange for ones that genuinely protect our lives, our environment and our future.

A spark of hope?

A spark of hope nevertheless flickers.

In Pontianak, West Kalimantan, a “group of indigenous and civil-society organisations filed a class-action lawsuit ​against President Prabowo Subianto and other authorities over ‌their handling of forest fires in the region”.

The suit alleged “the government’s negligence and failure to ​prevent and tackle forest and land fires that recur every year”.

Although these groups appear to have been ignored by the Indonesian president and government, this class-action lawsuit is a start.

We desperately need more angry people’s coalitions taking robust action in defence of their environment and their own lives throughout Southeast Asia.

Unconscionable companies will continue to burn our forests and poison our air and harvest us while our governments pretend to care, make statements but do nothing.

Asean will continue to hide naked behind its pathetic banana leaf of ‘non-interference’.

This regional crisis will only end when we become angry enough to rise up and demand real change.

Suggestions about the way forward can be found in the Greenpeace Indonesia & Malaysia and Pantau Gambut report. Readers are encouraged to read the report, especially pages 32-35, to get ideas about what needs to be done.

Read also:

We are not angry enough! Part 1: The haze is back, and so is the harm

We are not angry enough! Part 2: Is El Niño the real culprit behind Asean haze?

James Bayu is the pseudonym of an analyst who is deeply concerned about the recurring haze blanketing the region.

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