Originally published on cgiar.org by:Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) on Nov 1, 2006

Haze Solutions Must Not Overlook The Rural Poor

They appear every year just like Santa Claus. Except they're unwelcome, stick around too long and bear unwanted gifts. Fires. The fires in Indonesia that each year apply a long and slow torch to thousands of hectares of farming and forest lands, send tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere and hang a hazy shroud across much of South East Asia.

Some years are worse than others. 2006 is one of the bad ones. Some experts are saying it could be the worst since the 1997-98 dry season, when El Nino conditions saw fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan burnt across 11 million hectares and cause between US$6 – 9 billion in damages.

The annual fires in Indonesia cause massive business and health losses not only in Indonesia, but also in Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia and southern Thailand.

Damages include medical costs, lost productivity, lost tourism income, airline closures, timber losses, agricultural and plantation losses, and property losses.

And then there are all the intangible costs: the damage to forest ecosystem services, the loss of the habitat that supports biodiversity and the increase in global warming through carbon emissions.  

Solving the problem is not easy. One of the biggest difficulties people from developed countries have is understanding that the separation of agricultural activities from free-standing forests in their countries is not how forests generally operate in places like Indonesia.

In Indonesia, forests and people are closely integrated through a patchwork of agricultural and livelihood activities. This fact alone means the nature of the fires vary – from having many different causes to inflicting many different problems. To prevent and manage them demands many different solutions.

One of the biggest challenges in reaching these solutions is finding ways to overcome Indonesia's forest-related fire problems without exacerbating the social, poverty, and livelihood challenges millions of Indonesians face on a daily basis.

These issues are the subject of a major roundtable dialogue on October 19, 2006, hosted by Singapore Institute of International Affairs.

CIFOR's Director General, Frances Seymour, will open the dialogue emphasizingthe need for greater clarity on the causes, consequences and responses in dealing with the region's fires and haze problem.

The dialogue will also address other issues such as the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, efforts taken to date to solve the problem and the role of civil society groups in addressing the issue.

Learn More:

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