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Indonesia Forest Fires

ASEAN Leaders Can Act to Reduce Fires and Haze

Submitted by Fred Stolle, Nigel Sizer, Ariana Alisjahbana, James Anderson, Kemen Austin and Andika Putraditama on October 8, 2013

Less than four months ago, millions of people across Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia were choking on the worst air pollution ever recorded in Southeast Asia as hundreds of fires burned across Sumatra. The fires caused serious damage, eliciting a public health emergency, closing schools and harming tourism and other businesses.

This week the Sultan of Brunei is hosting many of Asia’s heads of state for the 23rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit. Preventing new fires and haze are high on the agenda. Key decisions and actions are urgently needed from the presidents and prime ministers this week. ASEAN ministers met in July to discuss this issue but failed to agree on significant actions; leadership is needed to solve the ongoing problem.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) has been closely monitoring the fires and haze since June. We have published several analyses highlighting the locations and patterns of the fires and we suggested steps that policymakers, companies and others could take to reduce the risk of future fires and haze. We are now able to share the summary findings from a more detailed analysis of the June fires using high resolution satellite imagery (see text box below for technical details).

The fires burned an area more than twice the size of Singapore, in the study area alone, and left behind large burn scars resulting in significant economic and other damage to forests and communities. WRI selected the 2.2 million hectares (ha) study area by examining areas with the highest density of fires. The study area and time frame were limited in scope due to the availability and expense of high-resolution satellite imagery. It is important to note that the amount of burning across the region was much more extensive than is reported here, as many fires fell outside of our study area.

Earlier WRI analysis showed that fires on this scale have occurred three times in the last ten years alone. The ASEAN Summit is the perfect opportunity for the region’s leaders to acknowledge the seriousness of these fires and the strong chance that they will recur soon unless concrete, collaborative steps to address the challenge are adopted. This could include measures such as establishing a

http://insights.wri.org/topic/indonesia-forest-fires

Summarize

            Indonesian burn down the forest in the Indonesia because they want area for plant palm. It’s impact on neighbors, because it’s cause trouble to 5 neighbors country , Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, Singapore. Now, forest fire in Indonesia has become important for ASEAN. I think, Fire event in Indonesia. This was very serious. The incident occurred with negligence but this event created a lot of damage.