Thousands of hectares of land on palm oil and pulpwood concessions run by large listed firms were burnt during the country’s worst fire season in years, highlighting the role of deforestation and land clearing, a study showed.
A total of 2.88 million ha of land were damaged by fire from January to October this year, driven by intense El Nino weather conditions and extreme heat, as well as clearing of forests to make way for industrial-scale palm oil and pulpwood plantations, according to a joint study by the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the geomonitoring platform Nusantara Atlas on Friday.
The amount of fire-damaged land in the first three quarters of this year was 35% higher than in the same period of 2019, the last year Indonesia faced strong “super-El Nino” conditions, Nusantara Atlas said.
While the analysis did not establish how the fires were ignited, it highlighted the risks associated with degraded peatlands and inadequate fire management regimes in rapidly expanding agricultural concessions, along with the role played by banks in financing deforestation.
“It’s not really a question of who lit the match, but who drained the peat and created the conditions,” said Alex Helan, RAN’s research and investigations lead.
The study looked at specific cases of fire outbreaks on large holdings, including ones run by business groups under investigation in Singapore as part of its transboundary haze law.
The study said banks and investors backing such risky operations in Indonesia need to “make access to financing conditional on credible fire prevention”.
“These companies have made business decisions in their offices ... to operate in an extremely fire-prone landscape, and to develop plantations in those landscapes for profit,” Helan added. — Reuters
