The decision by President Joko Widodo to cut short an important trip to the United States to return to Indonesia early to take personal charge of attempts to quell wildfires and peatland hot spots could – if you’re an optimist – be the inflection point in the country’s unenviable direction in destroying its forest cover and blanketing the entire region in smoke.
As a fleet of airplanes from as far away as the US, Australia and Russia dive-bomb the flames with water and retardant, the crisis has grown so great that the choking smoke could delay local elections slated for Dec. 9 in Indonesia and has generated a public health crisis Jokowi, as the president is known, aborted a groundbreaking trip to the US to meet President Barack Obama to discuss liberalizing trade and investment between the two countries, including an agreement to join the long-stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. One of the topics discussed with the US chief executive was Indonesia’s problems with greenhouse gas production.
The fires this year, spurred partly by the El Nino phenomenon, which has brought drought to Southeast Asia’s forests, are said to be the worst since at least 2006 when half a million hectares were cleared by burning, for the first time spurring a regional consensus that something has to be done to stop the forest degradation and clean the region’s skies during the burning season, which isn’t expected to end until sometime in December.
Large areas of forest in Kalimantan and Sumatra have been cleared by multinational oil palm and pulp and paper companies, to be replaced by plantations, the timber from the clearings shipped to China and Japan. Although such agribusiness interests as Asia Pulp and Paper have caught most of the blame, much of the fires are started by smallholders as well. Fires often destroy carbon sinks, peat bogs which are some of the world’s most critical repositories of carbon. Full story...
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As a fleet of airplanes from as far away as the US, Australia and Russia dive-bomb the flames with water and retardant, the crisis has grown so great that the choking smoke could delay local elections slated for Dec. 9 in Indonesia and has generated a public health crisis Jokowi, as the president is known, aborted a groundbreaking trip to the US to meet President Barack Obama to discuss liberalizing trade and investment between the two countries, including an agreement to join the long-stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. One of the topics discussed with the US chief executive was Indonesia’s problems with greenhouse gas production.
The fires this year, spurred partly by the El Nino phenomenon, which has brought drought to Southeast Asia’s forests, are said to be the worst since at least 2006 when half a million hectares were cleared by burning, for the first time spurring a regional consensus that something has to be done to stop the forest degradation and clean the region’s skies during the burning season, which isn’t expected to end until sometime in December.
Large areas of forest in Kalimantan and Sumatra have been cleared by multinational oil palm and pulp and paper companies, to be replaced by plantations, the timber from the clearings shipped to China and Japan. Although such agribusiness interests as Asia Pulp and Paper have caught most of the blame, much of the fires are started by smallholders as well. Fires often destroy carbon sinks, peat bogs which are some of the world’s most critical repositories of carbon. Full story...
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