08/29/2009

Since 1997, Indonesia has been plagued by forest and land fires mostly taking place in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Thick haze from the fires has drawn significant criticism and protests against Indonesia from neighboring countries. However, the government is still unable to stop the forest fires from occurring every year during the dry season. The Jakarta Post’s Adianto Simamora, Rizal Harahap, Jon Afrizal and Khairul Saleh from Jakarta, Riau, Jambi and South Sumatra respectively looked into this annual problem.

With no breakthroughs in law enforcement, land and forest fires have continued to rage across Kalimantan, Sumatra and Sulawesi islands as well as several parts of Java, as the repeated drive against slash and burn methods used to clear land have failed amid the current dry season.

The central government claims it had provided training on preventive measures for local people in fire-prone areas, months before the expected dry season.

“But, all the lessons were then forgotten when the dry season came. People returned to low-cost methods, clearing land with fire,” State Ministry for the Environment forest and land destruction deputy assistant Heddy Mukna told The Jakarta Post this week.

“Land and forest fires continue to pose a massive problem because the poor law enforcement has no deterrent effect *on those starting them*.”

The law on the environment only authorizes civilian investigators to seek explanations and evidence from individuals or companies. Any findings must be submitted to police, the only state agency authorized to arrest or detain suspects guilty of such offenses as starting bush fires.

Those found guilty of damaging the environment can face up to 10 years in prison and Rp 500 million (US$50,000) in fines.

“We want a special approach when dealing with environmental violators including in land and forest fires cases, otherwise slash and burn will remain a problem,” Heddy said.

The ministry is currently investigating 14 companies in Riau and 11 firms in Central Java, in cases involving land and forest fires.

The investigating team detected hotspots in lands owned by 77 companies operating in Riau during the first seven months of the year.

The environment ministry has pledged to submit its findings on forest fires to police for legal action against any perpetrators showing a disdain for the environmental law.

The ministry has also unveiled a plan to fence off any burned land for use as evidence.

However, a source at the ministry admitted that the office was facing difficulties to enforce the law on forest burners because of budget limitations.

State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar has appealed to the governors and regents in fire-prone areas to stop all open burning activities and revoke bylaws allowing local farmers to carry out open burning.

The ministry also pledged to hand over financial aid to local farmers who could avoid open burning in their land.

Land and forest fires have ravaged thousands of hectares in Jambi, Riau, South Sumatra, North Sumatra and all Kalimantan provinces. The ministry detected about 7.064 hotspots during August alone.

The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia branch found that the hotspots in Riau province had continued to increase from 973 in January to 2,395 in July, the most of any province in Indonesia.

It reported about 52 percent of these hotspots were located on land belonging to local people, 31 percent were in managed forest areas (HTI) and the remaining 17 percent in plantation areas.

Riau and Kalimantan have been the most severely affected areas during the recent forest fires, which have caused repeated closures of airports and sent thousands of students home because of smoke and haze.

The national taskforce for handling disasters has planned to deploy helicopters to stop land the forest fires in Central Kalimantan.

“We will bring the police with us to arrest perpetrators we find in burned-out areas. This is part of our work to enforce the law,” senior environmental official Soetrisno said.

Soetrisno said his office would also deploy helicopters to extinguish forest fires including those in Riau.

“But we will only provide help at the request of local administrations,” he said.

Forestry Minister M.S. Kaban earlier said the government would only take firm action to control forests if haze disturbed flights and sparked protests in Malaysia and Singapore.

Analysts say the expected return of the El Ni*o phenomenon will cause massive forest fires, as it did in 2006, when fires ravaged more than 145,000 hectares of forests around Indonesia.

The Forestry Ministry has proposing around Rp 24 billion in the 2010 draft state budget in anticipation of imminent dry storms from El Ni*o.

Head of the forest fire unit at WWF Indonesia, Hariri Dedi, agreed that poor law enforcement and public awareness remained the main causes of repeated forest fires.

“However, the government’s campaigns to stop the fires are still ineffective since no incentives have been provided to those avoiding using fires to clear land,” he said.

“The government often only comes to the field after fires have ravaged the land and forests.”

PALANGKARAYA, C Kalimantan, Aug 29 (Bernama) — Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said the government and House of Representatives (DPR) had completed deliberations on an Environment Bill and were expecting it to be passed into law within a week’s time, Indonesia’s Antara news agency reported.

Speaking to reporters covering his visit to Jabiren village in Pulang Pisau, on Friday, he said the government and the House had also agreed that the environment law would be given a title that clearly indicated it was designed to protect and manage the living environment.

“Under the law, we will have to protect the environment and manage it in sustainable ways for the sake of our own and the next generations,” he said.

On the problem of frequent land and forest fires in Central Kalimantan, Witoelar said to overcome it, the entire apparatus of the provincial administration should be able to prevent such fires by familiarising the public with the existing regulations on preventive measures, and enforce them by applying firm sanctions to violators.

“Thereby, the frequency of land and forest fires can be minimised most effectively and at minimum cost,” he said.

According to the minister, the frequency of land and forest fires in the country had now reached a worrying level. Monitoring via the NOAA satellite recently had shown there were a total of 18,000 hot spots in the country of which 7,400 were located in Central Kalimantan.

Source — BERNAMA

2009/08/23
Amy Chew
Source: http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/articles/20kalim/Article/

Large tracts of forests are gone in Central Kalimantan, no thanks to unbridled logging and ill-conceived agricultural plans. Two young conservationists have set out to repair the damage, writes AMY CHEW.

IN the darkness of the night, blazing fires beneath the earth glow bright red, illuminating the desolate landscape in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, where fires have razed the land over and over again. The fires spew thick smoke into the air, stinging the eyes and damaging the lungs of millions who inhale its acrid particles.

On both sides of the 500-kilometre road from Kumai to Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan’s provincial capital, grass, shrubs and trees grow over where lush forest used to stand.

“You can see the fires more clearly at night as this is peat land. It burns beneath the ground. In the darkness, you can make out the smoke,” says Budi, a 32-year-old driver.

This is the same haze which blows to Sarawak during the dry season.

Multi-million-dollar companies burn the land to clear forests and peat land for palm oil plantations, triggering fierce fires which rage for months on end. The huge corporations include Malaysian and Singaporean investors.

The demand for bio-fuel, which is made of oil palm, has led to more forests being cleared.

Illegal logging and timber companies also drive the rapid deforestation of Indonesia’s pristine forests and peat lands, which are important “green lungs” to the world.

A little south of the province stands the tiny village of Mendawai, which is built on illegal logging.

But with its forests stripped bare, the inhabitants are left hungry and destitute.

“I have not worked in a long time. All the big trees have been chopped down,” said Syahwani, the village chief, a former illegal logger.

In 2005, the government sent in the police to crack down on illegal loggers who are allegedly paid by financiers from Malaysia, Java and Palembang.

“The villagers are suffering because they have no alternative means of income,” Syahwani said.

The population of Mendawai has since shrunk from 2,800 to 1,500 as most of the people have left to seek employment elsewhere.

Indonesia has 120 million hectares of forest and peat land, of which 28.3 million ha have been cleared or degraded, according to the Forestry Ministry.

Indonesia is also the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the world after China and the United States from the burning of its forests and peat land.

The release of CO2 into the atmosphere has contributed to global warming, resulting in prolonged droughts, severe flooding and rising sea levels.

A new breed of Indonesians has emerged, however, and they are determined to do better than those who came before them.

Two young Indonesians have embarked on a project to conserve peat land in Central Kalimantan, which is about three times the size of Singapore and home to more than 15,000 indigenous people and 2,000 orang-utans.

Named the Katingan Peat Conservation Project, the 217,000 ha of peat land are located in the districts of Katingan and Kotawaringin.

The peat land is estimated to store a staggering one million tonnes of carbon.

Dharsono Hartono, 35, and his partner, Rezal Kusumaatmadja, 39, hope to sell this carbon to the voluntary carbon markets, which are worth about US$2 billion (RM7.05 billion) per year. Trade in CO2 under a United Nations-backed scheme known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestations and Degradation (REDD) involves using carbon credits from saving forests in developing countries to offset emissions in developed countries.

Industrialised nations will pay developing countries for the CO2 credits.

“We want to set an example by sending the message that it is possible to care for the environment without foregoing profit,” said Rezal. “For the past 32 years, we have been exploiting the forests in the most wasteful way.

Money from the sale of carbon credits will be used to restore degraded land within the conservation and to develop livelihoods for the local communities, including the villagers in Mendawai.

“We have identified several economic activities which can be developed, among them, rattan and coffee cultivation,” said Rezal.

Environmentalists are pinning their hopes on REDD to save Kalimantan’s forests and the orang-utans which are in danger of becoming extinct.

The project has already attracted the attention of Macquarie Capital Adviser Ltd of Australia.

“Forest carbon is a new market in which Macquarie expects strong growth in line with anticipated changes to global climate change agreements,” said Oliver Yates, head of climate change for Macquarie.

“We are pleased to be working with the Katingan project, which aims to be a world leading demonstration of how forests can be retained by using carbon finance.”

Dharsono and Rezal met in Cornell University in the 1990s where they were studying.

Dharsono has a first degree in industrial engineering and a Master’s in financial engineering. He then worked for Wall Street.

Rezal studied urban planning. After graduation, he worked for the Conservation and Community Investment Forum in Hawaii.

He is now a partner of Starling Resources, a sustainable natural resource management consulting firm. The two friends met again in 2007 after returning to Indonesia.

“We want to give back to the people,” said Dharsono, who is the managing director of PT Rimba Makmur Utama, a forest conservation firm.

Now, there are 20 REDD projects in the pipeline in Indonesia at different stages of development.

“This is a pioneering project because it’s an Indonesian-led initiative. Most of the investment money will come from local investors,” said Dharsono.

As a pioneer project, it has a huge start-up cost amounting to millions of dollars.

One of the most expensive cost components is the measurement and projection of the amount of carbon stored in the peat land, a process known as carbon accounting.

The Clinton Foundation, with funding from the Norwegian government, will provide financial support to develop the methodology, carbon accounting and community development for the project.

Central Kalimantan is a focus of the conservation effort because 1.5 million ha of peat land were stripped bare during former president Suharto’s rule. He had wanted to convert the land into a mega rice field. The plan failed and the exposed peat land is now a tinder box for fires in the dry season. The Katingan project covers part of the tinder box.

While the project has great potential, it is also an uncharted territory.

“There is no REDD transaction in the world at the moment. We are taking our chances,” Dharsono said.

by Michael Grunwald, NPR
Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112327040

August 28, 2009

1. “We Need to Do Everything Possible to Promote Alternative Energy.”

Not exactly. It’s certainly clear that fossil fuels are mangling the climate and that the status quo is unsustainable. There is now a broad scientific consensus that the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than 25 percent by 2020 — and more than 80 percent by 2050. Even if the planet didn’t depend on it, breaking our addictions to oil and coal would also reduce global reliance on petrothugs and vulnerability to energy-price spikes.

But though the world should do everything sensible to promote alternative energy, there’s no point trying to do everything possible. There are financial, political, and technical pressures as well as time constraints that will force tough choices; solutions will need to achieve the biggest emissions reductions for the least money in the shortest time. Hydrogen cars, cold fusion, and other speculative technologies might sound cool, but they could divert valuable resources from ideas that are already achievable and cost-effective. It’s nice that someone managed to run his car on liposuction leftovers, but that doesn’t mean he needs to be subsidized.

Reasonable people can disagree whether governments should try to pick energy winners and losers. But why not at least agree that governments shouldn’t pick losers to be winners? Unfortunately, that’s exactly what is happening. The world is rushing to promote alternative fuel sources that will actually accelerate global warming, not to mention an alternative power source that could cripple efforts to stop global warming.

We can still choose a truly alternative path. But we’d better hurry.

2. “Renewable Fuels Are the Cure for Our Addiction to Oil.”

Unfortunately not. “Renewable fuels” sound great in theory, and agricultural lobbyists have persuaded European countries and the United States to enact remarkably ambitious biofuels mandates to promote farm-grown alternatives to gasoline. But so far in the real world, the cures — mostly ethanol derived from corn in the United States or biodiesel derived from palm oil, soybeans, and rapeseed in Europe — have been significantly worse than the disease.

Researchers used to agree that farm-grown fuels would cut emissions because they all made a shockingly basic error. They gave fuel crops credit for soaking up carbon while growing, but it never occurred to them that fuel crops might displace vegetation that soaked up even more carbon. It was as if they assumed that biofuels would only be grown in parking lots. Needless to say, that hasn’t been the case; Indonesia, for example, destroyed so many of its lush forests and peat lands to grow palm oil for the European biodiesel market that it ranks third rather than 21st among the world’s top carbon emitters.

In 2007, researchers finally began accounting for deforestation and other land-use changes created by biofuels. One study found that it would take more than 400 years of biodiesel use to “pay back” the carbon emitted by directly clearing peat for palm oil. Indirect damage can be equally devastating because on a hungry planet, food crops that get diverted to fuel usually end up getting replaced somewhere. For example, ethanol profits are prompting U.S. soybean farmers to switch to corn, so Brazilian soybean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures to pick up the slack and Brazilian ranchers are invading the Amazon rain forest, which is why another study pegged corn ethanol’s payback period at 167 years. It’s simple economics: The mandates increase demand for grain, which boosts prices, which makes it lucrative to ravage the wilderness.

Deforestation accounts for 20 percent of global emissions, so unless the world can eliminate emissions from all other sources — cars, coal, factories, cows — it needs to back off forests. That means limiting agriculture’s footprint, a daunting task as the world’s population grows — and an impossible task if vast expanses of cropland are converted to grow middling amounts of fuel. Even if the United States switched its entire grain crop to ethanol, it would only replace one fifth of U.S. gasoline consumption.

This is not just a climate disaster. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a hungry person for a year; biofuel mandates are exerting constant upward pressure on global food prices and have contributed to food riots in dozens of poorer countries. Still, the United States has quintupled its ethanol production in a decade and plans to quintuple its biofuel production again in the next decade. This will mean more money for well-subsidized grain farmers, but also more malnutrition, more deforestation, and more emissions. European leaders have paid a bit more attention to the alarming critiques of biofuels — including one by a British agency that was originally established to promote biofuels — but they have shown no more inclination to throw cold water on this $100 billion global industry.

Read more at NPR

Zoo still has window of opportunity
Property owners would consider longterm financial solutions
BY PAM BRANNON
Source: Gulf Breeze News

The Zoo Northwest Florida in Gulf Breeze is closed permanently.

But a small window of opportunity remains to save the Zoo if a governmental agency, task force or corporation wanted to step in and take over responsibility for The Zoo.

But that window won’t be open long.

“We need a long-term commitment,” said Robert Switzer, one of three partners of Animal Park, Inc. (API) who own the property. The other partners are Pat Quinn and Dr. Jim Potter.

“The three of us have been the backstop for The Zoo for the last few years. Over a twomonth period this summer, we put in $300,000 out of our pockets, and now this month we are putting more into the operation of The Zoo. We just cannot do it any more.

“Personally, I feel it is not fair to my family or to my business partners to keep subsidizing The Zoo for the rest of the community.”

Switzer announced The Zoo would not re-open at last week’s Santa Rosa County South End Tourist Development Council meeting. The TDC Board was scheduled to discuss whether to give The Zoo $125,000 to help get through the winter. The Escambia County Commission had said it probably would match that amount if Santa Rosa County came up with the money from any county agency.

But Switzer made the closing announcement before any discussion or vote was taken at the TDC meeting.

The Zoo is about $4.5 million in debt.

“Getting the $250,000 to make it through the winter would be like giving money to a crack addict,” Switzer told Gulf Breeze News “We need a longterm commitment. Danyelle (Lantz, former Zoo executive director) has been running to the county with hat in hand for the last few years. If the county or community wants a zoo, it needs to commit to fund it like other counties in other states.

“But right now, we are moving ahead with closing down The Zoo and finding homes for the animals.”

Switzer would like to see a task force of community leaders from more than one governmental agency join forces to be the backstop for The Zoo.

“I think it would be good if someone from the City of Gulf Breeze joined with someone from the Santa Rosa County Commission as well as someone from Escambia County Commission and members of the two counties’ TDC Boards to put together a task force who would want to work with us to keep The Zoo going,” Switzer said.

“I have spoken with several corporate sponsors over the past few years that have been interested in backing some part of The Zoo – like paying for the train. But they always want to make sure they have assurances that we are going to be here for the long term.

“When Danyelle and her staff are trying to count pennies to try to pay their employees and feed the animals each month, they cannot worry about expanding The Zoo or thinking about the long-term future,” Switzer said.

The moment of truth

The turning point for Switzer came during the last county commission meeting when Lantz asked commissioners for support and suggested that perhaps there could be a special taxing district through an MSTU created by referendum vote of the people in the next election.

“The commissioners refused to even allow the issue to be placed on the ballot,” Switzer said. “They said people would probably not want to vote for a tax to support The Zoo. But they did not let the people decide; they decided for them.

“That told me there is no support among our county commissioners now or in the near future for The Zoo.”

Last week, Lantz resigned as Executive Director of The Zoo.

Quinn said Animal Park, Inc. is taking steps to find suitable homes for all the animals and still has 21 employees working to take care of the animals inside the park.

“We had 40 employees and laid off all but 21,” he said. “We also have a veterinarian on staff that takes care of the animals daily.

“We would like to see the two counties decide they want to have a zoo and get together with an idea or plan and come to us. We would be willing to work with a group like that to save The Zoo, but as of now we are working to place animals, and The Zoo is closed. It is still costing us $70,000 a month to operate the way we are right now, with no funds coming through the door at all now.

“We just don’t have the heart or energy to subsidize it anymore.”

Quinn has lobbied Santa Rosa County Commissions for more than 10 years, asking them to do something about backing The Zoo.

“It is not just this county commission,” he clarified. “Ever since The Zoo became a non-profit organization 10 years ago, I have talked and talked to county commissioners. They have always said there is no money for The Zoo. But they have spent recreation funds and franchise fees to open new parks and put up new playground equipment in those parks for years.

“Not one of those slides in those parks ever generated a tax dollar for the community. But that has been their priority.”

What’s next for animals?

Quinn has received e-mails and calls from zoos in other states interested in the animals from this zoo.

“We have to find homes for 600 animals. It is not an easy job,” he said. “When you move an animal like a gorilla across country, it takes three months of paperwork and a lot of planning. But we are going to do what is proper and not do anything illegal with these animals. We will make sure they are taken care of by people with the correct professional licenses and proper credentials.”

Some citizens have asked Quinn if any animals would be euthanized if homes were not found for them.

“We have a veterinarian, and he decides if an animal is too sick to survive and makes a recommendation to euthanize. No animal will be euthanized simply because it is difficult to find a new home for them. If they are sick and suffering, then they will be treated the same as at any time in The Zoo’s history,” Quinn said.

The animal rights group PETA (People For Ethical Treatment of Animals) voiced concern about a particular baby orangutan. PETA, based in Virginia, received information saying an almost 4-year-old orangutan would be separated from its mother and sent to a wildlife preserve in Connecticut, since that baby had been used as collateral in a loan to The Zoo earlier this year. PETA said baby orangutans usually are not separated from their mothers for at least eight years.

“We have not separated the baby from its mom,” he assured. “There are lots of rumors going around right now.

Quinn said closing the Zoo is a terribly emotional decision.

“I’ve had a dream since 1960 to have a zoo right here in this area,” he said. “For 25 years, we made it happen.

“Just think of all the kids who won’t get to go to a zoo or see some of these animals close up any more if this goes away. This is a heartbreaking decision for me.”

Visit the source. You’ll be glad you did: Scientific American

Image: Dead orangutan being carried off of a palm oil plantation, courtesy of the Center for Orangutan Protection

More than 20,000 orangutans have been poached, killed by loggers or sold into the illegal pet trade in the past 10 years, according to a new report (pdf) from Nature Alert, Ltd., in Bath, England, and the Jakarta, Indonesia–based Center for Orangutan Protection (COP) that says not a single person in Indonesia has been prosecuted for these lucrative crimes.

The population of the endangered Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) is currently estimated at fewer than 50,000 by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species—half what it was 60 years ago. The Bornean orangutan’s cousin, the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii), has an estimated population of just 7,300 animals—an 80 percent decline in the past 75 years.

International trade in orangutans is forbidden under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and orangutans are protected in Indonesia, where it is illegal to kill, capture, transport or even injure one of the rare apes.

And yet, the killings continue. “The problem is, the law is never enforced, largely because the Ministry of Forestry has never shown any interest in serious wildlife or habitat protection,” says Sean Whyte, director of Nature Alert.

As to why so many orangutans have been killed, it basically boils down to one word: greed. It’s not the orangutans themselves that have commercial value. Rather, it’s the land that they live on, which is being burned down to make room for massive (and often illegal) palm oil plantations. Palm oil is a common ingredient in many processed foods. Around 90 percent of the world’s palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaysia.

“Indonesia’s forests are being destroyed at a rate equivalent to six football fields a minute,” says Richard Zimmerman, director of Orangutan Outreach in New York City, which helps to raise funds for the COP and helped to fund the new report. “When you fly over Borneo today, all you see is mile after mile of oil palm plantations where only a few years ago you would have seen pristine tropical rainforest. The forest is simply gone. And every creature living in it has been slaughtered.”

When forests are cleared, adult orangutans are often shot and killed, but not before they are otherwise mistreated. “These peaceful, sentient beings are beaten, burned, mutilated, tortured and often eaten. Babies are torn off their dying mothers so they can be sold on the black market as illegal pets to wealthy families who see them as status symbols of their own power and prestige. This has been documented time and again,” Zimmerman says.

The palm oil plantations are “miles and miles long,” he says. To make matters worse, “it’s a monocrop that destroys the soil. When satellite imagery is taken of the region, you see scorched earth where the forests have been destroyed.”

Hardi Baktiantoro, director of the COP, puts that into context, with the following prepared statement: “The palm oil industry must be one of the worst, maybe even the worst, environmentally damaging industries in the world.”

Nature Alert and the COP are calling on the government of Indonesia to start enforcing its existing laws and to stop issuing new permits for logging or palm oil plantations in area where orangutans live.

Until Indonesia takes action, all three groups say that people around the world can help by not buying products that contain palm oil, and to ask their retailers not to sell those products. “Consumers have real power, if only they will use it,” Whyte says. “In the U.S. especially, we need lots more people to start questioning their retailers. In Europe it has been successful and this past week in New Zealand, Cadbury’s have promised to remove palm oil from their chocolate.”

“Awareness is first and foremost, especially in this country,” Zimmerman says. “So many people have no idea what palm oil is, where it comes from, or why it’s a problem.”