ENVIRONMENT: U.N. Welcomes Asian Forest Fire Prevention Pact

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 10 2002 (IPS) - The United Nations praised Monday a legal agreement among 10 Southeast Asian nations to prevent forest fires. Wildfires have plagued the region since 1997 and caused billions of dollars in economic and environmental damage.

“I welcome the strong stand taken by governments to prosecute, or rescind the licenses of, logging and plantation companies on whose property illegal fires are detected”, said Klaus Toepfer, head of the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

The agreement signed Monday by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos and Burma – monitoring, prevention and mitigation of smoke from forest fires.

“The legal framework provides another layer of resolve and preparedness against future forest fires,” Toepfer said.

The forest fires, which started in 1997-1998, were mainly on oil palm plantations and agricultural and forestry holdings on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan.

They were fanned by hot, dry conditions caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, triggering thick clouds of smoke across neighbouring Southeast Asian nations.

According to UNEP, about 10 million hectares of Indonesia’s national forests, described as one of the world’s major centres of biodiversity, were destroyed by the spreading fires.

Some 20 million people were exposed to breathing extremely high levels of pollutants known to cause long-term health effects.

The fires also forced Singapore and Malaysia to close down airports, many of which were covered in blankets of thick smog. UNEP estimated the total economic losses to be in the region of over 9.3 billion dollars.

The United Nations, which provided legal assistance in the drafting of the agreement – formally called the ‘ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution’- has already helped enhance the fire fighting capacity of the 10 Southeast Asian Nations.

Additionally, it has helped establish early warning systems to detect hotspots from satellite imagery.

Last year the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI) called for much stronger penalties against clearing plantations by fire. The WRI described the 1997-1998 forest fires as “an unprecedented human and ecological disaster”.

But the fires themselves were mostly set deliberately by plantation companies “eager to clear forest land as rapidly and cheaply as possible,” it said.

“The solution lies not so much in strengthening technical capacities for fire prediction, prevention and mitigation, as in a major restructuring of relationships between the state, the private sector, and the millions of forest-dependent peoples living in and on the fringes of the nation’s forestlands,” WRI said.

Blaming the former Indonesian government for permitting illegal logging by political cronies, WRI said that private interests enjoyed virtually free rein under the 32-year-old rule by former President Suharto.

Jagmohan Maini, head of the Secretariat for the UN Forum on Forests, said last year that although forest fires have become an international issue, there was still no binding international agreement on the matter.

Most countries had mechanisms for predicting and managing forest fires, but some of the major recent forest fires were beyond the national capacities of individual countries.

In a report released in January, the United Nations said that the lack of appropriate financial and fiscal mechanisms to undertake forest protection has become a major problems affecting many developing nations.

“Forests protected areas remain severely understaffed and underfunded in many countries,” the study said.

The report also said that several Asian countries have taken protective measure against natural disasters in forestry.

In the Philippines, logging bans or harvest moratoria are in force in 70 percent of the forests. In Vietnam, between 1990 and 1998, there was a 40 percent decline in wood production from natural forests.

In Thailand, where there is a policy to preserve all remaining natural forests and conservation areas, the government is promoting an increase in planted forests, with a 60:40 split between private and state-owned.