Friday 29 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 23): Malaysia may experience less smoke pollution caused by burning forests in Indonesia as early as next year, if key policy talks in Jakarta succeed in getting the "big growers" to limit fires within a certain radius under their concession.

An industry player said the move could greatly reduce the occurrence of fires, believed to have been started by local farmers who burn their crops to prepare for the next plantation cycle.

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An announcement is expected to be made in the next few weeks, following consultation with major players in the plantation industry, sources said.

One of them is Golden Agri-Resources Ltd (GAR), the world's second largest palm oil company.

GAR managing director Agus Purnomo, met recently in Kuala Lumpur, declined to reveal details of the plan, but confirmed that his company was among those involved in the multi-stakeholder consultations organised by Jakarta to prepare the fire prevention policy.

Agus said if the policy materialised, GAR would take joint responsibility to prevent fires around its concession, in accordance with the proposal.

He estimated that it would take three years to realise the full potential of the policy decision, but agreed that Malaysia and Singapore could experience less hazy days from as early as next year once the plan was implemented.

"I'm not a fortune teller to say by how much the haze will be reduced next year, but at least it's not going to be three months of darkness," he told The Malaysian Insider on the sidelines of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil meeting in Kuala Lumpur recently.


Root cause

Agus refused to blame any party over the fires, but said they were started by "those who had no other means to prepare their land for livelihood purposes".

He said that weather conditions such as El Nino also resulted in fires without human intervention.

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Agus stressed that fires were started outside their concessions and the perpetrators were usually nowhere to be found.

"Before, they will practise controlled burning, where they stay and ensure the burnt area is contained. Now, they just light up and run," he added.

Agus said in reality, the fires only affected a negligible 0.5% of GAR's crop.

"Our own plantation gets burnt from fire started from outside, but the size that is burnt is so small, almost negligible, it's only 0.5%, and we are able to put out the fire in a matter of hours," he said.

Agus said big growers like GAR are actively involved in putting out fires outside their plantations.

Out of the company's 100,000-strong workforce, 10,000 are trained as firefighters, he said.

Supporting local community farmers

Agus said if the policy went through, growers would assist local farmers prepare plantation land, giving them technical support and educating them "not to light a match".

Agus said the Indonesian government also needed to lead this effort as the areas were beyond their legal boundaries.

"We don't have a mandate to operate beyond our concession but if they (government) tell us to do that, sure, we would be happy to," he said.

He said under the policy, larger growers would be responsible to prevent fires in the areas surrounding their concession, for example, up to a 3-5km radius, depending on the location.

Under the plan, local governments would work with the planters to conduct training and public education programmes for the local community, adding that an outreach programme could take up to three years given the 75 million population involved in Sumatera and Kalimantan.

"Even if you do a communications programme, it cannot be done in a month.

"And we need to instill behavioural change with the right mix of policy and contributions from stakeholders.

"For example, if we can get the commitment of a certain local community not to use fire, and they in turn need access to clean water, we can build it under our CSR programme.

"If they can prove to us that for one year, no fires were started in that particular area, that is how the plan is envisioned to work," he said.

Greenpeace International, in a damning report released on November 19, said that forest and peatland destruction by "sustainable" palm oil companies was fuelling forest fires in Borneo.

Its investigation examined three plantations in West and Central Kalimantan where major fires were recorded during the 2015 smoke crisis.

It said in each case, there had been widespread deforestation and peatland drainage prior to the fires breaking out, adding that deforestation and draining of peatland were widely recognised as the root cause of the crisis, including by Indonesian authorities.

Smoke from land-clearing in Sumatra and Kalimantan enveloped many parts of Singapore and Malaysia, and until last month had several times forced the closure of schools and airports.

Indonesian researchers recently said the smoke was expected to last until January next year as the scale of land-clearing was larger than before, coupled with dry weather.

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