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Indonesia Forest Fires to End in 2 years!
August 25th 2006: Pressure from neighboring countries has prompted Indonesia’s environment minister to pledge that forest fires will be put to an end in 2 years.
Smoke or haze as it is called in this region from the recurring forest fires in Sumatra and Borneo have posed a constant health threat on neighboring countries like Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. This has also affected the tourism industry.
Indonesia’s Environment Minister Rachmat Witeolar told Reuters that "We are making very, very serious efforts.
We will not be able to eradicate the fires completely this year and next year, but in two years they will be gone," One of the steps taken by the government to curb this problem is to impound land that belongs to timber and plantation companies who are suspected to have cleared lands using fires.
20 such companies are currently under investigation. All those who are found guilty will be arrested and their land will be seized.
However Witoelar was not ready to take full blame as he mentioned that fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan have declined from 3000 last year to 1000 this year.
He also said that Indonesia is not the only country in the region that causes forest fires citing the incident in Sarawak, Malaysia.
He said that blaming Indonesia for the haze is not fair because "The problems with our fires are that the wind blows from the south-east, thereby affecting neighboring countries. There's nothing we can do about the location of the earth,"
Indonesia is yet to sign the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution which came into effect in 2002.
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