Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Indonesia's rain-forest haze annoying its neighbours...

Despite numerous promises by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that it would stop, the burning of Indonesia’s rainforest is continuing, to the point where the haze is so thick that schools are closing, airplanes are being diverted and 60 percent of Malaysia is experiencing moderate pollution.

Indonesia’s immediate neighbors are expected to bring up the choking haze on Sept. 22 at a two-day meeting of environment ministers from member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to be held in Bangkok. The meeting is part of an annual series to discuss cross-boundary haze issues, so far to no avail.

(...)

Behind the haze, however, is an even denser air of bureaucratic inertia and entrenched corruption that continues to thrwart the aims of the international compact known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). REDD had proposed including secondary forest as well as untouched primary forest, less and less of which continues to exist each year. Officials estimate that some 35 million hectares have already been degraded. The forestry ministry can’t agree on how much primary forest remains and is subject to REDD, saying 55 million hectares of primary forest are subject to the moratorium. The president’s office, however, says it should be 64 million hectares of primary forest and another 20 million hectares of peatlands. Full story...

Don't miss:
  1. Indonesia's vanishing tigers, vanishing rain forests... 
  2. The Rape of Borneo... 
  3. Starving orang-utans forced into village for food as rain forest is destroyed...
  4. I bought a rainforest...
  5. Pakistan left to drown by the "timber mafia..."
  6. Haze in Singapore, Indonesia under pressure... 
  7. Story of a sacred mountain in India:the Dongria Kondh fight Vedanta...

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