Malaysia Haze News Archive

Why Indonesia cannot stop the fires and haze

2011-11-11T16:01:00.001+08:00

SOME years ago, I travelled from Pontianak into the centre of South Kalimantan during the burning season in a hired car.

We drove many hours through a country that was completely covered in fire and smoke, but mostly smoke. It was a strange experience, not at all like what we had expected. It was quite safe to drive even though the fires were burning right up to the roadsides. There were people living among the burning vegetation in little huts all along the way, spaced out at wide intervals and carrying on as if everything was normal. No property was damaged and no lives were lost. Here and there a small flame would flare up but only for a short time and then the vegetation would continue to smoulder. These so-called forest fires were not at all like the life-threatening forest fires of Australia, the United States, and the Mediterranean. What was going on?

Our driver told us the story. The huts were occupied by settlers who were the children of the original Transmigrasi migrants from Java. Their parents had been shipped in by the government to occupy land schemes sponsored by the government. These land schemes were like the Felda schemes in Malaysia, on land cleared from forests. That was one generation ago. The children of these land schemes were now spreading out all over Kalimantan and clearing land for themselves.

The custom in Kalimantan is that any land cleared and occupied belongs to whoever clears and occupies it. Any land that reverts back to jungle is open to others to clear and claim. As a result, each settler clears as much land as possible although he is able to farm only a small part of it. The rest would revert back to jungle but is prevented from doing so by fires set by the settlers themselves whenever the weather is dry. So the same land is burnt year after year after year. These are fires on low vegetation, deliberately set by hundreds of thousands of independent poor farmers who barely survive from hand to mouth, living in absolutely primitive conditions. When will it end? When somebody buys the land and converts it to permanent organised agriculture, as for growing oil palm. The land that the settlers clear and claim represent their only hope of escape from poverty.

The timber industry could be blamed because in logging, they create roads into the forests and leave behind the dead branches and leaves that can be set on fire in the first round of burning. The oil palm industry can be blamed if it gives the settlers hope by ultimately buying land that has been cleared and repeatedly burnt. But it is ultimately the social conditions in the country that are responsible for this state of affairs.

If Malaysia did not have a strict land-ownership system whereby people could legally own land in perpetuity or for specified periods, we would quickly see a land grab and total disappearance of all our forests, followed by annual fires to keep land cleared. Our land laws were established and enforced by the British when they had absolute power to do so, in the name of the sultans. It would be difficult for countries without such laws to establish and enforce such laws now.

After that drive into the interior of Kalimantan, I visited the peat areas near the coast. These areas were also heavily covered in smoke, to the extent that the airport had to be closed, but the concept here was different. The fires were set by Bugis rice farmers from Sulawesi who had cleared the forests by fire after their gigantic ramin trees had been extracted by loggers. The peat is many metres deep and unsuitable for growing rice, so the farmers grow pineapples and other acid-tolerant plants. Every year, during the dry season, they set the peat on fire and burn of a part of it. Eventually, after about 10 years, all the peat will be burnt off and they will be able to grow rice on mineral soil.

The annual fires in Kalimantan and, I assume in Sumatra also, are not spontaneous forest fires but deliberate agricultural fires started and kept alive by hundreds of thousands of peasant farmers. Solutions like sending in the fire brigade, or raising the penalty for oil palm growers and loggers for setting forests on fire, sound good on paper but does not come anywhere near to addressing the issues.

I cannot help but suspect that the real reasons for the fires and haze were known long ago by people on the ground, but it served the purpose of the international environmental NGOs and the international news agencies to put the blame on their favourite baddies the logging and oil palm industries. So long as the problem is not examined honestly, no implementable solution is likely to be found.

l Botanist and researcher Francis Ng is the former deputy director-general of the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia. He is now the botanical consultant to Bandar Utama City Centre Sdn Bhd and the Sarawak Biodiversity Centre.

Source: The Star Online

Damage Done, Only Thing Left Is To Prevent Future Haze

2006-10-21T21:36:00.000+08:00

By Jackson Sawatan

SINGAPORE, Oct 21 (Bernama) -- On normal days, one could easily see the trees lining the northern coast of Singapore, just a few kilometres across Johor Baharu (JB).

But the days are hardly normal nowadays. Each day, residents on both sides of the causeway, in Brunei, some parts of Thailand as well as in Sumatra and Kalimantan, would wake up to the smell of acrid smoke and polluted mists, hardly able to see beyond a few kilometres.

Friday, Singapore "vanished" from the JB view as visibility was down to only 1-2km because of the haze which has been particularly bad for more than a month now.

"It's as though there's nothing there," said a JB resident, pointing towards the general direction of Singapore from Danga Bay.

Likewise, those living along the northern coast of Singapore could barely make up the JB skyline.

Some experts say the impact of the current haze could be as bad as the 1997-1998 haze crisis where the region, especially Indonesia -- epicentre of the haze problem -- suffered up to US$9 billion (US$1=RM3.64) in losses.

The crisis prompted the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) to sign an Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze in 2002. The treaty recognises the responsibility of states for pollution and establishes an Asean Centre to promote joint actions and closer cooperation on fire-fighting and prevention.

But the haze keeps coming back around this time of the year -- prompting many to ask if there was nothing more that could be done to prevent the problem from recurring.

Indonesia's Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, in an interview with The Straits Times, said the country has made an all-out effort to prevent the ongoing haze from worsening but the dry season made it difficult.

"We started (vanquishing fires) in June and we had everything in place. In September, when the (Indonesian) President (Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono) visited Singapore, we thought everything was under control.

"We thought we had vanquished the fires but two weeks after that, came the second wave of forest fires... the weather has been so difficult that even experts were misled," he said in the report.

"Slash and burn among the Indonesian farmers as well as plantation workers who started fires on the land they want to work on, has been identified as the source of haze-causing fires but prosecuting them is difficult," he said.

"Of the 300 cases being probed so far, we could only pursue 16," Rachmat said.

The current haze has already done its damage. Civic groups, think tanks and academics from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Thailand met here on Thursday to find ways to address the problem.

"It affected health, education, tourism, air traffic and other economic and social activities," chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, Simon Tay, said.

An economist here put the damage at about $50 million (S$1=RM2.30) for the various sectors in Singapore.

It has been acknowledged that closer cooperation will be needed much more in the future if the recurring problems are to be minimised, if not resolved.

"This should not be viewed as Indonesia being the cause of the problem and exporting the problem to other countries in Asean," said Datuk Seri Mohamed Jawhar Hassan, chairman, Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia.

"Rather, countries affected by the haze should see the problem as their common problem and shoulder the responsibility together.

"The current haze might have just taught Asean a lesson -- that until such a shared responsibility is translated into real work on the ground and on the field, the haze will keep on coming back as scheduled, year in and year out," he said.

-- BERNAMA

Malaysia To Forward Proposal On Haze Fund At Asean Ministerial Meeting

2006-10-20T08:47:00.000+08:00

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 20 (Bernama) -- Malaysia will forward a proposal on the setting up of a haze fund and the use of sound mechanisms to tackle the perennial problem in the region at the Asean Ministerial Meeting on Haze in the Philippines next month.

Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid said he was asked by the Cabinet to propose both measures at the meeting.

The meeting will ascertain how the fund will be managed and the amount needed to tackle the haze problem, he told reporters after handing out Hari Raya aid to the needy at a function organised by the Cheras Umno division here today.

"The cost to bring the haze under control is exorbitant because the applicable method at present involves the use of aircraft for fighting forest fires.

"Therefore it is only fair that other Asean countries share the cost of dousing forest fires in Indonesia, which had failed to tackle the problem over the last few years," he said.

Azmi said Asean would be meeting every three months to find long term and short term measures to tackle the haze.

The setting up of the fund was mooted by the Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak recently.

In 2002, Asean countries agreed to join forces to fight forest and peat soil fire in member states but Indonesia has yet to ratify the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution to tackle the problem.

On the haze in Malaysia, Azmi said there was nothing much that could be done except for hoping for wind and rain to clear the air.

-- BERNAMA

Indonesia faces financial sanctions as forest fires threaten rare species

2006-10-17T14:02:00.000+08:00

ELEPHANT and orangutan reserves are under threat from forest fires in Indonesia that have sent a pall of smoke across much of south-east Asia, prompting health warnings and forcing flight cancellations.

The fires, covering millions of acres, have been burning for weeks, triggering fears of a repeat of the months of choking haze in 1997 that cost the region billions in economic losses.

Neighbouring nations have called on Indonesia to ratify swiftly a regional treaty to fight the fires, and warned that they will delay financial assistance if it does not.

In Sumatra's Jambi province yesterday, smoke from more than 100 fires reduced visibility to less than 50 yards.

In Riau province, Sumatran elephants may be moved out of a national park after uncontrolled fires destroyed 247 acres.

Saut Manalu, a senior official at the Tanjung Puting national park on Borneo, where 6,000 orang-utans live, blamed deer hunters for setting many of the fires, which he said were further endangering the under-threat species.

"We can hear them scream at night," he said. "We are focusing on how to put out the fires. If they go out of control, we will take care of the animals. We may need to evacuate them.

"In order to lure deer, hunters often set ablaze certain areas so that fresh grass could grow on the burnt land. Deer would graze there because they like young leaves."

Indonesia's neighbours are increasingly frustrated at Jakarta's failure to tackle the annual dry-season fires.

Singapore, which has suffered from the haze since the start of October, saw its air Pollutants Standards Index climb to an unhealthy 130 yesterday. Malaysia's foreign minister said a collective fund was needed to battle the problem.

"We need to have a fund where everybody contributes, because we are all affected," he said.

"I don't think it will be fair for any country like Malaysia [to] spend on our own. It's too big, it's too much. The source is in Indonesia."

Local officials praised the steps taken by environmental ministers from Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore to pressure Indonesia to ratify the haze agreement, but a leading local environmental organisation said it failed to adopt adequate preventive measures.

"It failed to come up with a concrete agenda both in the short and long term," said Chalid Muhammad, executive director of the Indonesian Environmental Forum.

Indonesia should have proposed emergency laws to empower the government to revoke permits from plantation companies found to be using illegal cut-and-burn methods, he said.

Malam Sambat Kaban, Indonesia's forestry minister, said more than 75 per cent of the fires were not in government forests, but on plantations and farms of private companies and local people.

He said the Central Kalimantan area was the worst hit, with about 2.5 million acres of peatland in one area on fire. Peat fires are difficult to extinguish and can burn for months.

Indonesia bans slash-and-burn practices by farmers and plantations, but prosecutions take time and few have stuck.

Source: The Scotsman

Indonesia asks for help over fires polluting region

2006-10-16T22:16:00.000+08:00

By Ahmad Pathoni

PEKANBARU, Indonesia, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Indonesia appealed for help on Friday to fight forest and brush fires that have spread choking smoke over much of Southeast Asia as regional environment ministers prepare to meet for talks.

The ministers from Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Brunei were due to hold talks later on Friday in Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province, an area of Sumatra island badly affected by the raging fires.

Indonesia's neighbours have become increasingly frustrated over Jakarta's inability to deal with the annual dry season blazes, which in past weeks have caused serious air pollution across the region, particularly in Malaysia and Singapore.

"We are asking for assistance in terms of equipment or expertise. We will see what they can offer to us," Indonesian Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban told reporters.

Malaysia has proposed that the five countries buy two Russian-built Ilyushin aircraft designed to scoop up sea water and douse fires, Riau police chief Ito Sumardi told reporters.

The plan was for the planes, costing $90 million each, to be placed in Sumatra and Kalimantan, also in Indonesia, he said.

Kaban said Indonesia hoped its neighbours would recognise the complexity of the problem and that officials would be invited to take part in a field trip on Saturday to view affected areas.

The fires, often started deliberately by farmers or big plantation businesses, have been burning for weeks in parts of Indonesia, creating a choking haze that has made many ill, shut airports and threatened wildlife in protected forests.

Kaban said more than 75 percent of the fires were not in government-controlled forests but in plantations and farms belonging to private companies and local people.

He said that Central Kalimantan on the Indonesian part of Borneo island was the worst hit, with around 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of peat land in one area on fire. Peat fires are particularly hard to put out and can burn for months.

"This is where most smoke came from," Kaban said.

MASK-WEARING PROTESTERS

Outside a hotel where senior officials were meeting to flesh out details for the ministerial meeting, about 20 environmental activists in face masks held a protest over the fires.

"Business people are receiving special treatment from the government while the people here and in neighbouring countries are suffering from the haze. This environmental disaster is an embarrassment for Indonesia," Johnny Mundong, head of the environmental group WALHI Riau, told Reuters.

Visibility in some areas of Indonesia was cut to 30 metres (100 ft) last week, forcing cars to use headlights, although there was only a slight haze over Pekanbaru on Friday.

Sumardi said 70 people had been arrested over the fires, most of them workers in fields.

"But we are investigating three companies and our investigation is leading to the management of the companies."

Indonesia bans slash-and-burn practices by farmers, timber firms and plantations. But prosecutions take time and few have stuck. Sumardi conceded that a lack of cash was hurting the investigations.

Under pressure from its neighbours, Indonesia said on Thursday it would ratify a Southeast Asian pact that calls for regional cooperation to deal with the forest fires.

The Association of South East Asian Nations approved the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution in 2002, but Indonesia's parliament has yet to ratify it, angering countries affected by the smoke, known as haze in the region.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has apologised to his neighbours for the haze, has pledged to use all resources available to put out the fires.

Severe fires and smog during a drought in 1997-98 made many people ill across a wide area of Southeast Asia, cost local economies billions of dollars and badly hit the tourism and airline sectors.

Source: Reuters

Forest fires result from government failure in Indonesia

2006-10-16T13:44:00.000+08:00

Forest fires result from government failure in Indonesia
October 15, 2006

Indonesia is burning again. Smoke from fires set for land-clearing in South Kalimantan (Borneo) and Sumatra are causing pollution levels to climb in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangkok, resulting in mounting haze-related health problems, traffic accidents, and associated economic costs. The country's neighbors are again clamoring for action but ultimately the fires will burn until they are extinguished by seasonal rains in coming months.

2006 fires in Borneo and Sumatra
Smoke from agricultural and forest fires burning on Sumatra (left) and Borneo (right) in late September and early October 2006 blanketed a wide region with smoke that interrupted air and highway travel and pushed air quality to unhealthy levels. This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on October 1, 2006, shows places where MODIS detected actively burning fires marked in red. Smoke spreads in a gray-white pall to the north. NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data provided courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response team.

The fires -- and their choking haze -- have become a yearly occurrence in Indonesia. Some years are worse than others -- especially when dry el Niño conditions turn the region's forests into a tinderbox -- but the overall trend is not encouraging. Why do these catastrophic fires continue to burn?

Fault should lie first with the Indonesian government for its systematic failure to enforce laws designed to reduce the country's appalling rate of deforestation. Since 1990 official figures show Indonesia has lost a quarter of its forest cover. Loss of primary forests has been even worse: nearly 31 percent of the archipelago's old growth forest have fallen to loggers and land developers over the same period. Menacingly, deforestation rates are not slowing. Annual forest loss has accelerated by 19 percent since the close of the 1990s, while yearly primary forest loss has expanded by 26 percent. These statistics should be an embarrassment to Indonesia and are testament to the government's impotence in dealing with forest loss and incompetence in reigning in cronyism and corruption.

Forest loss in Indonesia

The direct causes of forest loss in Indonesia are not complex. Most deforestation is the result of logging and land conversion for agriculture. Today Indonesia is the world's largest exporter of tropical timber -- a commodity that generates upwards of US$5 billion annually -- and the second largest producer of palm oil, one of the world's most productive oil crops used in everything from cookies to biofuel.

Deforestation rates are climbing in Indonesia

Legal timber harvesting affects 700,000-850,000 hectares of forest per year in Indonesia, but widespread illegal logging boosts the overall logged area to at least 1.2-1.4 million hectares and possibly much higher—in 2004, Environment Minister Nabiel Makarim said that 75 percent of logging in Indonesia is illegal. Despite an official ban on the export of raw logs from Indonesia, timber is regularly smuggled to Malaysia, Singapore, and other Asian countries. By some estimates, Indonesia is losing more than $1 billion a year in tax revenue from the illicit trade. Illegal cutting is also hurting legitimate timber-harvesting businesses by reducing the supply of logs available for processing, and undercutting international prices for wood and wood products.

Logging in Indonesia has opened some of the most remote, forbidding places on Earth to development. After decimating much of the forests in less remote locations, timber firms have stepped up operations on the island of Borneo and in provinces on New Guinea, where great swaths of forests have been cleared in recent years. For example, more 20 percent of Indonesia's logging concessions are located in Indonesian Papua, up from 7 percent of in the 1990s.

Beyond logging, conversion of forest for large-scale agriculture, especially oil palm plantations, has been an important contributor to forest loss in Indonesia. The area of land covered by oil palm expanded from 600,000 hectares in 1985 to more than 5.3 million hectares by 2004. The government hopes to see this expanse nearly double within the next decade and, through its transmigration program, has encouraged farmers to turn wild forest lands into plantations. Since the fastest and cheapest way to clear new land for plantations is by burning, the effort has worsened fires: every year hundreds of thousands of acres hectares go up in smoke as developers and agriculturalists ignite the countryside before monsoon rains begin to fall in October or November.

Government failure

While Indonesia has laws to protect forests and limit agricultural burning, they are poorly enforced. Forest management in the country has long been plagued by corruption and lack of political commitment. Underpaid government officials combined with the prevalence of disreputable businessmen and shifty politicians, has traditionally meant that logging bans go unenforced, trafficking in endangered species is overlooked, environmental regulations are ignored, parks are used as timber farms, and fines and prison sentences never come to pass. Corruption, combined with an atmosphere of cronyism established under ex-president General Suharto, has at times directly undermined efforts to control forest fires: in 1997, the country was unable to use its special off-budget reforestation fund to help combat the fires because the money had been ear-marked for a failing car project owned by the dictator's son. Today the government still refuses to effectively punish those who violate laws that ban fire-setting for land clearing.

It's time for the Indonesian government to get serious about addressing deforestation and the recurrent fires. Political commitment is key -- without it, vast sums of donor money will continue to be squandered without stemming illegal logging and forest loss.

The government needs to ratify the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, a convention signed in 2002 following the 1997-1998 forest fires. The agreement calls for multi-national cooperation to combat fires in the region. Ratifying the agreement would be a first sign of political commitment to the issue, but the government would then need to be follow up with implementation and good governance initiatives, like enforcement of its relatively strict codes banning land burning. Without enforcement, laws are useless. Indonesia can no longer afford to overlook criminal activates by powerful interests. For example, it needs to follow up on Malaysia's request to prosecute Malaysian companies involved in forest fires in South Kalimantan and Sumatra. Firms found to be responsible for illegal fire-setting, no matter where they are based, should see their business licenses revoked and their officers imprisoned.

As fires subside this winter, Indonesia should aggressively investigate opportunities afforded by the emergent carbon market which could allow the country to be compensated by protecting forests from development. Other innovative strategies -- from comprehensive timber and agricultural certification to private sponsorship of forest conservation -- should not be overlooked.

International failure

While it's easy to lambaste the Indonesian government for inaction, the international community has also failed. Instead of criticizing Indonesia for its shortcomings, foreign governments should be pledging expertise and massive amounts of assistance. Indonesia's forest fires have global impact by extinguishing biodiversity and contributing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere (the 1997 fires released an estimated 2.67 billion tons of carbon dioxide). Regionally, the fires poison the air and have even been linked to declining rainfall. In a case where Indonesia's problems are the world's problems, the global community needs to rise to the occasion to address these catastrophic fires in an intelligent and well-coordinated manner.

More on Indonesia's fires

Borneo and Sumatra burn as forest fires rage -- 10/4/2006
Forest fires are again buring across Borneo and Sumatra (Indonesia) according to satellite images released this week by NASA.

Forest clearing in forest area near oil palm plantations in Kalimantan Photo by R. Butler

Vast areas of natural forest have been converted for soy farms in the Amazon and oil palm plantations in Asia. However, on a relative basis, oil palm may be more ecologically sound due to its higher oil yield than soy. In theory, because oil palm can produce as much as 30 times more oil per unit of area, it could require a lesser amount of land clearing. Of course planting oil palm on previously deforested land would be a preferrable option.

At $400 per metric ton, or about $54 per barrel, palm oil is competitive with conventional oil. In the future, palm oil prices are expected to fall further as more oil palm comes under cultivation.

<--a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0524-orangutans.html">Saving Orangutans in Borneo -- 5/24/2006
A look at conservation efforts in Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo. I'm in Tanjung Puting National Park in southern Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. At 400,000 hectares (988,000 acres) Tanjung Puting is the largest protected expanse of coastal tropical heath and peat swamp forest in southeast Asia. It's also one of the biggest remaining habitats for the critically endangered orangutan, the population of which has been great diminished in recent years due to habitat destruction and poaching. And orangutans have become the focus of a much wider effort to save Borneo's natural environment. We are headed to Campy Leakey, named for the renowned Kenyan paleontologist Louis Leakey. Here lies the center of the Orangutan Research Conservation Project. Established by Birute Mary Galdikas, a preeminent primatologist and founder of the Orangutan Foundation International (OFI), the project seeks to support the conservation and understanding of the orangutan and its rain forest habitat while rehabilitating ex-captive individuals. The Orangutan Research Conservation Project is the public face of orangutan conservation in this part of Kalimantan, the Indonesia-controlled part of Borneo. Borneo, the third largest island in the world, was once home to some of the world's most majestic, and forbidding forests. With swampy coastal areas fringed by mangrove forests and a mountainous interior, much of the terrain was virtually impassable and unexplored. Headhunters ruled the remote parts of the island until a century ago.

<--a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0520-indonesia.html">Shippers in Indonesia fight decree on illegal logging -- 5/21/2006
According to a report from the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), shippers in Indonesia are threatening to stop transporting logs if the government insists on enforcing a new decree on the transportation of illegal timber. The Indonesian National Ship-owners Association says that the Indonesian government's proposal to impound ships carrying illegal timber would cause massive losses to the local shipping industry, according to the ITTO Tropical Timber Market Report. The association contends that authorities should only confiscate illegal wood, not the ships.

<--a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0425-oil_palm.html">Why is palm oil replacing tropical rainforests? -- 4/25/2006
In a word, economics, though deeper analysis of a proposal in Indonesia suggests that oil palm development might be a cover for something more lucrative: logging. Recently much has been made about the conversion of Asia's biodiverse rainforests for oil-palm cultivation. Environmental organizations have warned that by eating foods that use palm oil as an ingredient, Western consumers are directly fueling the destruction of orangutan habitat and sensitive ecosystems. So, why is it that oil-palm plantations now cover millions of hectares across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand? Why has oil palm become the world's number one fruit crop, trouncing its nearest competitor, the humble banana? The answer lies in the crop's unparalleled productivity. Simply put, oil palm is the most productive oil seed in the world. A single hectare of oil palm may yield 5,000 kilograms of crude oil, or nearly 6,000 liters of crude.

<--a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0405-indo.html">United States and Indonesia to fight illegal logging -- 4/5/2006
The United States and Indonesia today agreed to fight illegal logging in some of the world's most diverse rainforests. Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Elka Pangestu and Chief of the US Trade Office (USTR) Robert Portman said the two countries will coordinate efforts of protect Indonesia's forests which have been significantly degraded and destroyed by the illicit timber trade. While Indonesia houses the most extensive rainforest cover in all of Asia, its natural forest area is rapidly being reduced by logging--most of which is illegal. Between 1990 and 2005 the country lost more than 28 million hectares of forest, including 21.7 million hectares of virgin forest, according to data from the United Nations.

<--a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0927-reuters.html">Malaysia urges neighbors to help prevent haze -- 9/27/2005
Malaysia urged its neighbours on Tuesday to ratify an agreement to control air pollution in southeast Asia, a month after forest fires in Indonesia caused some of the worst haze in the region in eight years.

<--a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0906-tina_butler.html">Fires in peat lands cost climate -- 9/6/2005
The tropical rainforests of Kalimantan have long been threatened and increasingly endangered by deforestation and other invasive types of human activity. However, a lesser known ecosystem in the region that is literally coming under fire, is the tropical peat lands, particularly in the central area of the province of Indonesian Borneo.

<--a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0905-fao_fires.html">Forest fires have serious economic and health consequences warns FAO -- 9/5/2005
Large forest fires in South-East Asia, notably in Indonesia, have caused serious health and environmental problems, in particular choking haze in the region, FAO said today.

<--a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0830-malaysia_law.html">Illegal loggers to be imprisoned in Malaysia, possibly executed in Indonesia -- 8/30/2005
Illegal loggers will now face mandatory jail time in Malaysia under new laws expected to be implemented sometime early next year. Existing enforcement efforts, which rely on fines but are poorly enforced, have largely failed to curb illegal wood harvesting in the country's tropical rainforests.

Source:mongabay.com

Indonesia apologises to neighbours over haze

2006-10-15T18:38:00.000+08:00

Published: Thursday, 12 October, 2006, 11:02 AM Doha Time

Indonesians pray yesterday for rain in Palangkaraya, on Borneo island, to douse illegal land-clearing fires that have caused a choking haze shrouding parts of Indonesia for weeks

JAKARTA: Indonesia apologised yesterday to Singapore and Malaysia for the choking haze over both countries and agreed to convene a meeting of regional environment ministers to tackle the problem.
Anger had been growing in Malaysia and Singapore over the choking haze from fires raging in Sumatra and Kalimantan in Indonesia, which every year drift over parts of Southeast Asia - damaging health and disrupting transport and tourism.
“On behalf of the Indonesian government, I have to apologise to the neighbouring countries for this incident even though clearly this is not an intentional (act) by Indonesia,” said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
“Clearly, this is not a problem we intend to inflict to our neighbours and we are continuously trying to tackle it and prevent it in future,” Yudhoyono told a press briefing at his office in Jakarta.
Singapore’s foreign ministry said earlier yesterday that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had written to Yudhoyono to “express his disappointment” over the choking smoke.
Lee’s comments followed criticism on Tuesday from Malaysia’s Natural Resources and Environment Minister Azmi Khalid, whose country has also suffered unhealthy air quality levels because of the haze.
Singapore yesterday invited environment ministers from affected nations Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Brunei to a meeting tomorrow to discuss “urgent” measures to deal with the problem.
But Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda insisted the meeting should be held in his country, possibly in Pekanbaru city on Sumatra island’s Riau province, near Singapore.
“We want the meeting to be held nearer to the where the problem is being handled,” he told reporters in Jakarta.
Wirayuda did not say when the meeting in Sumatra would take place, but his comments were greeted with immediate satisfaction by Singapore.
“We are delighted that Indonesia has heeded calls from the region to take urgent action to deal with this serious problem,” said a statement from the island state’s foreign ministry.
“We commend Indonesia for taking responsibility and agreeing to convene this meeting. Singapore was happy to agree to shift the meeting to Indonesia.”
Affected countries attending the meeting could help Indonesia “prevent a recurrence of the problem in the future and take immediate action to mitigate the fires” causing the haze, Singapore’s foreign ministry said.
Large Corps clearing forests for palm or timber plantations and small farmers using slash-and-burn methods have been blamed for the annual burn-off that causes the haze.
Yudhoyono vowed to punish the culprits. “Plantation firms are still violating the law in reopening their fields by setting fire ... or known to us as illegal land clearing. This is clearly a crime that must be punished,” he said.
Last Saturday, Singapore’s environment agency issued a health advisory because of the fog-like haze.
Earlier this week Malaysia issued a hazard warning for ships in the Malacca Strait that split it from Singapore after haze caused visibility to drop along the vital waterway.
In Kuala Lumpur, the Air Pollutant Index hit an unhealthy reading of 159 Monday, forcing people to wear face masks. – AFP

Source: Gulf Times

烟霾年年来袭,马印互相指责何时了？

2006-10-15T18:11:00.000+08:00

【本刊郭华盈撰述】假使每年都来袭的烟霾的主要源头仍是加里曼丹与苏门答腊烧笆导致，而大量种植油棕仍被视为替代石油的来源，油棕园拥有者又与政治人物有密切关系，民众即使做出再多的抗议与愤怒，也无法在每年9月、10月再拥蓝天白云。

每年一到烟霾季节，吉隆坡就开始指责雅加达苏门答腊与加利曼丹的农民非法烧笆，雅加达反过来指责涉及烧笆的是马来西亚油棕或终种植公司，吉隆坡则要求雅加达采取法律行动对付，但是后者却没有什么具体行动。

大家很不明白，为什么会有人可以年复一年制造困扰马印新泰等几国，几千万人的烟霾，却又每次都逃过被对付。

澳洲记者町约翰斯（Dean Johns）在《当今大马》的专栏中指出，以今天的卫星科技，印尼政府要鉴定那一家公司或园主涉及非法烧笆，一点也不难。

但是，为什么至今吉隆坡指责雅加达烧笆导致烟霾，雅加达反过来指责马来西亚公司是其中的烧笆者，却又不采取法律行动对付这些不负责任的公司。町约翰斯因此坚信，马印新政府机构应该知道当中的罪魁祸首。

显然，烟霾问题牵连的不只是环境问题，还有跨国的经济政治利益关系，以及执法不严、贪污等问题。

针对马来西亚政府鼓励大量种植油棕生产生物柴油的政策，环保运动分子黄孟祚指出：“生物柴油根本不是真正解决石油匮乏之道。大量种植油棕是错误的政策。”

“首先，马来西亚没有这样多土地来种植油棕，砍伐森林种植油棕也是不正确的，站在生物多样性的原则，生物多样性消失对环境来说是很危险的。”马来西亚政府与私人公司目前在外国包括印尼种植油棕。

印尼环保组织一批环保分子昨天在东盟环境部长会议召开前，聚集在各国代表团下榻的酒店，发动抗议示威，要求政府严惩涉及烧芭的农园公司。

环保组织“哇希尔”廖内省分会，与其他自力救济机构组成联合阵线发动示威。哇尔希廖内省分会副主任门东声称，该联合行动阵线反对这项讨论烟霾问题的区域性会议，烟霾它只会使到印尼蒙羞。他指“前来出席会议的国家也是林火的肇始者，却戴上了在印尼投资的面具”。

示威者举着许多标语，内容包括“印尼已被邻国羞辱”，“马来西亚企业也在廖内省烧芭”，“印尼林业部长卡班下台”及“严惩非法伐木的企业”。

该联合行动阵线在新闻发布会上公布，有63家国内外投资公司涉嫌以烧芭方式开辟或清理农地，其中有6家是马来西亚商人投资的农园公司。此外，有两家印尼华商拥有的纸浆公司也被点名造成廖内省生态环境遭到破坏。

涉及经济政治利益关系

黄孟祚指出，环保的原则是“污染者付费”，但是现在却是由国家来付费，即受害者付费。这都是执法不严所致，即使是在印尼，抓的也是小园主、小农民，犯法大规模的跨国公司可能就逍遥法外。

“特别在国际油棕价格一直看涨，以及马来西亚政府提倡生物柴油的政策下，种植油棕的园地就被大量开发，在这大前提下，大家变得放肆起来。”

他指出，马来西亚与印尼的环境法令的确有缺陷，被当局发现涉及烧笆的园主，最多不是罚款了事，罚款的数额再多也没有采取植被方式清理农地来得昂贵。

“这中间关系微妙，在印尼的大规模油棕园拥有者与马印政治人物有密切关系，要真正严正执法，似乎不容易。”

“况且，印尼至今都还没有签署，这中间不是涉及技术还是金钱问题，而是缺乏政治意愿去落实。再加上东盟本身只是一个没有法律约束力的俱乐部。” 2002年制定的《防止跨国界烟雾污染协议》，东盟10个成员国中，印尼与菲律宾是仅剩的未签署国。

印尼昨天曾表示它将签署防止烟害的东盟协定，但却没有提出时间表。协定一旦签署，东南亚成员国如马来西亚与泰国，就可以迅速调派消防人员，从而提高扑灭林火的效率。

然而，签字后印尼就必须执行完全不烧芭的政策。此外，雅加达也可以动用协定下的烟雾基金，支付灭火和人工降雨的费用。根据印尼法律烧芭是非法的，但由于执行不严厉，一般都不理会这些禁令。

生物柴油不是石油能源匮乏的救星

另一方面，黄孟祚指出：“此外，生产生物柴油还是需要机械来操作，机械也需要使用石油，这根本是不经济的做法，生物柴油还是会对环境造成污染。这中间涉及很大的环境成本，成本是转嫁给消费人。”

“一天消费人认为还有石油的替代品，就会继续浪费能源。我们应该把精力与金钱花费在开发风力与太阳能能源，减低对化石能源的依赖。开发生物柴油只是一种推延依赖的做法。”

黄孟祚以他的观察指出，我国还是有许多人即使车子没有开动，还是继续启动引擎，浪费能源，显然油价即使高涨，还是在他们负担范围内，也没有因此培养节省能源、环保的观念。

他强调，整个社会对能源使用的态度必须改变，不应该继续保留在局部的观念上。

针对烟霾一再重临，本区域国家一副一筹莫展的模样，是不是反映了发展中国家不关注环境问题，黄孟祚倒有不同的看法。

他指出：“也不能说发展中国家，不管是印尼还是马来西亚不关心这个问题，烟霾的确有一定的影响，只是他们都没有去做应该做的事情。据我们所知，烟霾的源头是印尼油棕园采取‘刀耕火种’的方式清理农地，而林火一旦烧起来，是不容易扑灭的，其中不少位于偏僻的确的油棕园，扑灭林火的设备也不足。”

刀耕火种方式最廉宜

无论如何，他指出：“发展中国家有经济的考量，即用最廉宜的方式处理（农忙后放火烧笆），而印尼的油棕产量目前也超越马来西亚，印尼更大量开发土地，包括泥炭地种植油棕，泥炭地的问题加剧烟霾问题，因为，泥炭地一旦烧起来就会转成地下焚烧，难于扑灭。”

他指出，“刀耕火种”是传统的耕种方式，已经有很长的历史，不过在只是小农民或小园丘采用的话，还不至于对环境造成太大的问题，但是，一旦人人都这样做，而且连大规模的油棕园也如此做时，就会演变成严重的环境问题。

“特别是大型油棕公司要开发却又不愿意付出更高的代价清理农地，所以采取最高的手段（烧笆），而不是对环境保护、土壤有好处的植被方式，即用推土机把泥土推成梯田的方式，让植物自然腐烂，然后在上面耕种。这样的方式既可以获取自然肥料，也可以避免土地暴露。”

“不过当几乎人人都在做时，也没有人会承认自己涉及烧笆，人人都会指责隔邻的笆园的林火蔓延过来。”

期望风向改变老天下雨

雅加达传来一则印尼千名回教徒跪地求雨的新闻，乍读之下，在这个科技发达，马来西亚都准备送太空人上太空的时代，这或许有点荒谬。但是，回头看看在经济政治利益纠缠不清，烟霾仍笼罩我国天空时，求雨的动作也未必愚昧。

我们不是也在心里暗暗祈求风改变方向，或者来一场大雨，把烟雾驱散吗？那不也是一种在抗议无效，政府缺乏政治意愿改变现状的情况下，民众“听天由命”，祈求于天的动作？

新闻来源：独立新闻在线

Fighting peatland fires the local way

2006-10-15T13:52:00.000+08:00

Who says we’re helpless when it comes to the haze? ELIZABETH JOHN writes about one group’s small step in smokin’ Indonesia that could mean a giant leap in haze reduction for Malaysia.

WHIZZ around the world 220,000 times in your car and that crazy exercise will dump 2.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air.

Why’s that silly statistic important enough to print?

Because that’s the same amount of polluting carbon that one forest fire prevention project in Indonesia managed to keep out of air in its first three years.

Just how much lung-clogging particles it’s saved us from is incalculable.

The project was based on a simple idea — block two massive canals that drain water from a sprawling peatland and prevent it from turning into a torch.

The canals — some of the largest irrigation channels in the world — are 30 metres wide and cover a distance that stretches from Kuala Lumpur city to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang.

They are the legacy of the failed Mega Rice Project in remote Central Kalimantan where a million hectares of peat forest was cleared for padi over a decade ago.

At the time, thousands of kilometres of canals were dug to keep the soil drained in the rainy season and irrigated during the dry.

But the peatland stood high above the adjacent rivers, so the canals only sucked them dry. The soils were not suitable for padi and drainage left the parched peat highly flammable.

In the El Nino-driven dry season of 1997-1998, this tinderbox went up in flames and enveloped the region in a shroud of haze.

The site was abandoned but continued to burn periodically through years of inaction, hitting Sarawak particularly hard.

Then three years ago, Malaysian non-governmental organisation Global Environment Centre (GEC), and Wetlands International Indonesia, began talking to locals about blocking off the canals.

The canals were so wide that each could fit a giant IMAX screen between its peaty walls, with space to spare. Together, they were draining millions of cubic metres of water from the area.

"All the experts said we’d need machines to block canals wider than two metres," said GEC director Faizal Parish.

"If we had listened, all our money would have been spent on excavators."

Instead they sat down with locals from the nearest villages, hardy and resourceful people, who’d carved out a life in this desolate corner of Borneo with few amenities.

The groups picked their brains for ideas and brought civil engineers into the talks with local communities and government agencies.

Project partners Wildlife Habitat Canada and Indonesia’s Forest Protection and Nature Conservation directorate were also involved.

And here was born the plan — to block the canals by hand using local techniques.

Each block consisted of three log walls to be built across the canal by a clever use of a lever system and the force of human weight.

Each wall would be 3.3 metres away from the next. The spaces between them were filled with sandbags to staunch the flow of water.

Construction of each block took 50 people, three months and countless trips on narrow boats lugging 25,000 sandbags to the site.

In total, seven blocks were rammed into place along two main canals and a smaller one.

The blocks have since raised the water level in the peatland.

There have been no fires in the area and the forest has started to recover. Locals are fishing in the blocked-off sections of the canal.

The project has protected a site roughly the size of Singapore from fires. As big as that seems, it is only a twentieth of the vast Mega Rice Project.

Faizal believes there are still three to five million hectares of fire-prone peatland in Indonesia.

Some have been drained or illegally logged. Others are abandoned agricultural sites or land where water is poorly managed. Two million hectares have been partly burnt in previous fires.

The group’s also seen success in its other pilot projects in Sumatra, some in areas still being illegally logged.

Though the benefits of these small victories would be felt as much by the hazed-out Asean member countries as the locals, none funded these projects.

The financing came from faraway Canada. Its International Development Agency, through a climate change development fund, contributed RM12.7 million to cover the cost of the four-year programme.

A quarter of this went into community programmes, including the blocks.

Consider this: At the height of the haze in 1998, the government spent RM684,000 for just four months of cloud seeding.

For an extra 15 per cent per year, they could have the blocks — with far more lasting effects than cloud seeding.

"Even if Malaysia invests just a few million it would be worth it," says Faizal, "especially in Riau’s four million hectares of peat."

Now other groups doing similar work in Indonesia have adopted the techniques developed in these projects. The Selangor Forestry Department is also developing a pilot project with GEC.

The Netherlands is paying for another 40 blocks to be put into the former Mega Rice area.

The Indonesian central government has agreed to allocate funds for rehabilitation there, using canal blocking as a core part of its work.

Asked about the usual sad story of tied hands that Malaysian politicians often tell, Faizal says:

"There’s still plenty that can be done. Malaysia has a lot to contribute. It could be equipment for village fire-fighting groups or how to manage oil palm plantations on peatland. Adopt fire-prone districts, maybe?"

Malaysian companies opening plantations in Indonesia could reach out to villagers around them and help clear land without fire.

Malaysia could invest in sustainable solutions, adds Faizal. The cost would be far less than the losses the region suffers during each haze episode.

"If we don’t solve the problem, it won’t go away."

A project that stops fires and feuds

THEY were sworn enemies, the villagers from around the Berbak National Park in Jambi and park authorities.

Trapped by sawmill owners and traders into a life of illegal logging in the park, the villagers had even threatened rangers trying to enforce the law.

From time to time, fires had broken out in logged areas near the village and the steady flow of illegal logs coming out of the park entrance meant the protected forests were next in line.

Then GEC, Wetlands International and local partners stepped in three years ago. Countless meetings and nine months later, both sides agreed to start a rather unusual project.

About 700 villagers were given small loans for projects like chili planting and chicken rearing.

Instead of paying interest, they were asked to plant trees, jointly patrol the park and rebuild park facilities destroyed during their feud with rangers.

The project saw them plant thousands of economically important trees like cocoa, rubber and ramin in a buffer area between village and park.

The park was well-patrolled and guard posts were rebuilt.

All the while, a community service officer provided technical guidance and evaluated how well the locals kept their end of the bargain. If they had done well, their loans were converted into grants.

There have been no fires or fights, since.

Now, it’s fish they are harvesting

IT was tough convincing villagers to block old logging canals they’d worked so hard to dig up but one mighty fire changed their minds.

It was during long drawn-out discussions in Sungai Puning, Central Kalimantan, that the fire broke out — choking the village and leaving behind a trail of destruction.

Reluctance gave way to concern and they began work to block canals that were draining the peat and making it fire-prone.

Meanwhile in the Merang Kepahiyang Peat Swamp Forest near the Berbak National Park, large-scale illegal logging had taken place.

Large canals had been dug for access to the forest and to carry out logs. This left the Merang river riddled with 140 drainage channels, many abandoned.

In some cases, an agreement could be reached with loggers. When this happened, villagers and project co-ordinators created blocks that kept the water high but still allowed small logs to be extracted.

This allowed loggers continued use of some canals.

"It wasn’t the ideal solution but the local government couldn’t control the illegal logging," explained Faizal Parish of Global Environment Centre.

"So this was a necessary and realistic step."

The ending was a little happier for Sungai Puning folk. The blocked-up canals turned into natural fish ponds, trapping fish that swam by when the water level in the peatland was high.

A year after building the blocks, they thanked the project proponents for persuading them to take action. They recently reported harvesting two tonnes of fish from the blocked canal.

Source: New Straits Times

Indonesia incenses region with scorched earth policy

2006-10-15T13:49:00.000+08:00

NINIEK KARMINI

THE smouldering fields stretch as far as the eye can see, sending acrid smoke high into the air and over to neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore.

The only fire crew in sight is a team of men armed with buckets of water being paid to snuff out the blazes to ready the land for its new and lucrative crop - palm oil.

The deliberately set fire is just one of hundreds blazing on Indonesia's Sumatra island and its portion of Borneo, producing smoke that is disrupting plane flights and triggering health warnings in neighbouring counties.

The dry-season haze has plagued south-east Asia every year since the 1990s, stoking regional tensions and focusing attention on cash-strapped Indonesia's inability to enforce laws banning the practice.

"We do complain," said Singapore's minister for the environment and water resources, Yaacob Ibrahim. "I think each country has the right to complain."

Indonesia, also under international pressure to deal with its spiralling bird flu death toll and Islamic extremists responsible for a host of bombings, is appealing for help.

The need for assistance was evident yesterday in Sikijang, where acres and acres of what was once forests lay smouldering, with authorities nowhere to be seen.

Five youths were busy snuffing out the blazes. Dressed in sandals, they said they were paid US$5 (£2.70) a day by the landowner to douse the embers to prepare the land for palm oil and to protect parts of the field where the crop has already been planted.

"This was set alight on purpose to plant palm oil," said one of the men, Dariyanto, his face covered by a mask to protect him from the smoke. "It is impossible for me to put it all out."

Palm oil prices have hit record highs recently. The plant has a wide range of industrial uses. Much of Indonesia's crop is exported to the booming economies of China and India.

On Friday, environmental ministers from Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore met in haze-hit Pekanbaru on Sumatra and told Jakarta it must sign a regional treaty on combating the problem before it could receive financial help. "Nothing can move forward unless Indonesia ratifies the agreement," said Malaysian environment minister Azmi Khalid.

Indonesia is the only country in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations that has yet to ratify the agreement, which would result in the establishment of a regional co-ordinating centre capable of reacting quickly to the smoke.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono earlier in the week apologised for the haze and his spokesman said his country was prepared to sign, but did not provide a time-frame.

Indonesia says it is cracking down on those who set the fires, but police complain that prosecutions are hard to obtain. Officials have said that seasonal rains - due next month - are the only way to completely extinguish the flames. Most of the fires are on peat land, making putting them out very difficult.

The land-clearing fires resulted in south-east Asia's worst haze in 1997-98, when smoke from Sumatra blanketed much of the region.

The Source : Scotland on Sunday

Indonesian schools close, air quality plunges in Malaysia as brush fires worsen

2006-10-11T09:21:00.000+08:00

JAKARTA, Indonesia Smoke from raging Indonesian brush fires shut schools Friday and dragged air quality to "unhealthy" levels in much of nearby Malaysia, including in its largest city Kuala Lumpur and other tourist and business centers.

Firefighters in Indonesia said they were battling the illegally set land-clearing blazes 24 hours a day, while students handed out masks to protect residents from the acrid haze that has darkened skies over 215,000 square miles (557,000 square kilometers) of land.

"The conditions here are awful, really gloomy," said Sugeng, a restaurant worker in Pontianak, a hard-hit town in Indonesia's portion of Borneo island.

Schools in the city closed on government orders, said Sugeng, who uses just one name.

Farmers or agricultural companies set the fires on Borneo and Indonesia's Sumatra island as a cheap way to clear land for plantations, mostly for palm oil, during the region's annual midyear dry season.

They are often on peat land, making them hard to extinguish.

Only three of Malaysia's 51 air quality monitoring stations reported clean air Friday. Pollution levels hit officially designated "unhealthy" levels at 15 stations, including those in the capital, Putrajaya, nearby Kuala Lumpur and the tourist city of Malacca.

Singapore's Meteorological Services Division detected nearly 200 hotspots — large, intensely hot areas indicating fires — and moderate to heavy smoke on Sumatra and parts of Borneo by late Thursday, according to satellite images on its Web site.

The worst case of smoke-induced haze in Southeast Asia occurred in 1997-98. It blanketed much of the region and was blamed for losses of nearly US$9 billion in tourism, health and business.

Indonesia's cash-strapped government defended its anti-fire efforts amid criticism from Malaysian opposition lawmakers, and from residents forced to live in the gloom for weeks at a time.

"We are doing what we can, including cloud-seeding, but the problem is there are too many hotspots," said Hoetomo, deputy minister for environmental compliance. "Indonesia is a large country and the haze just hangs in the sky. We are hoping that rain will pour heavily soon."

Source: International Herald Tribune

Indonesian smoke haze spreads to Singapore and Malaysia

2006-10-11T09:11:00.000+08:00

A thick haze of smoke, from forest clearance fires in Indonesia, is spreading to Singapore and Malaysia.

The Singapore Environment Agency has issued a health warning advising people with heart or respiratory problems to take care.

The haze is coming from more than 1,000 on Sumatra and from the Indonesian side of Borneo, where local farmers or companies are thought to be deliberately burning down forests.

The annual burn-off causes a haze that typically smothers much of South East Asia.

The Indonesian government has outlawed land-clearing by fire but weak enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.

Source: Radio New Zealand

Indonesia‘s brush-fire haze continues

2006-10-10T15:15:00.000+08:00

By ANTHONY DEUTSCH, Associated Press Writer Sun Oct 8, 11:53 AM ET

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Smoke from brush fires forced officials to cancel flights and drivers to use their headlights in the daytime Sunday in western Indonesia, while the air quality improved in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.

The haze is a perennial problem for the region. The worst case occurred in 1997-98, when smoke from land-clearing in Sumatra blanketed much of the region and was blamed for losses of nearly $9 billion in tourism, health and business.

"We had to cancel all flights to avoid plane crashes and for passenger safety," Basuki Mardianto, the head of Sultan Taha Airport of Jambi province, told The Associated Press.

In Singapore, the National Environment Agency reported an air pollution reading of 34 — which it rates as "good" — Sunday after it soared into the "unhealthy" range Saturday when the index was at a nine-year-high reading of 150.

Malaysia urged Indonesia to quickly ratify an agreement that would facilitate a regional response across Southeast Asia to the use of environment-damaging slash-and-burn methods by Indonesian farmers and plantation owners.

Malaysian Environment Minister Azmi Khalid called on Indonesia to prosecute any plantation company or farmers found responsible for lighting brush fires. "We implore Indonesia to impose the most severe penalties under their law to anyone found guilty," he said.

Associated Press Writer Niniek Karmini contributed to this report.

Asean needs to do more for clean air and health

2006-10-05T13:46:00.000+08:00

05-Oct-06

MORE effort needs to be forthcoming from Asean member countries if the smoke haze problem in the region is to be managed, the Asean Secretary-General said.

Ong Keng Yong, in a phone interview, said the fires from land clearing activities in Indonesia and some parts of Malaysia were a regular and annual occurrence that was part of the traditional practice of preparing land for cultivation. These fires contribute to the smoke haze problem in the region, particularly during the dry season.

It was difficult to eradicate such activities completely, he continued. The ideal solution to the smoke haze problem would be to implement and enforce a zero-burning policy. Under this policy, ``people would not be permitted to start any open fire, and there would be efforts to find other ways to clear land,'' Mr Ong said.

The actual implementation of the policy on the ground was more complicated. Mr Ong point out that the local authorities currently had difficulty to carry out the zero-burning policy as they did not have all the necessary equipment and resources to do so.

``The zero burning policy requires local authorities to be given the equipment and resources, such as bulldozers and mechanised farming implements, to help clear the land so the farmers can carry out their cultivation in the next season without resorting to large-scale burning.''

Other inherent factors in the region also pose problems. Enforcement needed to be strengthened, but the sheer size of the countries involved made such measures difficult.

``The Indonesian authorities have assured us that they are doing their best with regard to enforcement,'' Mr Ong said. However, Indonesia being a big country, enforcement was difficult to be applied in all areas.

``It's a cat and mouse kind of situation. They might be enforcing some measures in a certain location, but in some other part of the country, there are still people clearing land and causing these fires,'' he said.

Educating inhabitants in the affected areas is one crucial step that need to be taken, but the farmers and communities are spread over large areas. Despite these challenges, Indonesia and its Asean neighbours should continue to conduct more public awareness efforts, urge stricter enforcement on the ground and to ensure smoother and more fluid mobilisation of fire fighting fires to combat the smoke haze problem, he said, adding that Indonesia's neighbours, including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines, were on standby alert and were prepared to send their firefighting equipment and manpower in case of a fire emergency.

Mr Ong viewed such measures to be merely temporary solutions. The problem should be tackled and solved using long-term, preventive actions, he said. One such measure is to reduce the fires by enforcing regulation to inhibit such activities that might lead to these fires.

Mr Ong said the authorities should start considering enforcing punitive measures for culprits. There are fears that some small farmers might be unduly penalised, but he stressed that the important aspect was getting local authorities to be effective in enforcing such measures.

The smoke haze affecting Brunei had cleared up in the afternoon, thanks to a prolonged period of rain in the morning. By the afternoon, the skies had cleared up and the haze lessened in intensity. According to the duty forecaster at the Brunei Meteorological Service, yesterday's visibility ranged between 1.5 to 5 km.

According to the duty forecaster, the rains were expected to continue early today which would help wash out the airborne smoke particles. Although the rain had managed to lessen the severity of the smoke haze overhanging the nation, the haze would still persist, he said.

The Brunei Times

Thick haze from Indonesia spreads across Malaysia, Singapore

2006-10-03T15:26:00.000+08:00

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Thick haze from land-clearing fires in Indonesia blanketed a large swath of the country's west Monday, sending air quality levels plummeting there and in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, officials said.

The smoke shrouded an estimated 556,000 square kilometers of land on Indonesia's islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan, forcing many residents to wear protective masks, and delaying flights.

"The haze has persisted for a whole week," said Frans Tandipau, a senior official tasked with extinguishing forest fires on Sumatra, as quoted by The Associated Press.

Fires from land-clearing activities in Sumatra and Kalimantan, and to a lesser extent Malaysia, have occurred almost every dry season since the late 1990s. They are typically set by people looking for a cheap way to clear brush for plantations.

Indonesia's annual burn-off causes a haze that typically smothers parts of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand as well as Indonesia itself.

The Indonesian government has outlawed land-clearing by fire, but weak enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.

In Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, many people were wearing face masks, residents there said. Flights in and out of airports were delayed early Monday when the haze was at its worse.

Air quality levels had reached "dangerous" levels, from "unhealthy" last week, according to a monitoring station in Palangkaraya, state news agency Antara reported.

In West Kalimantan, hundreds of "hot spots", or satellite readings indicating possible forest fires, appeared in a number of regencies.

At least 640 hot spots were detected through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric satellite Sunday in eight of the 12 regencies in the province.

Haze has blanketed Palembang, South Sumatra, and its surrounding areas over the last few days, especially during the day.

Local residents hoped the haze would ease so that they could resume their daily activities.

In Singapore, the air quality dropped to "moderate" Monday from "good" Sunday due to the fires in Indonesia, the National Environment Agency said. Residents complained the air was "hazy."

"The smoke haze has also obscured the sunlight and lowered the temperature and visibility," the agency said as reported by Agence France-Presse.

"The latest satellite picture showed that there are 97 hot spots and dense smoke haze in Sumatra, mainly in Jambi and South Sumatra. The current dry weather conditions in southern parts of Sumatra are expected to persist until mid-October," the agency reported.

Haze began to affect Singapore on Sunday afternoon.

The air quality also deteriorated Sunday along coastal areas of Malaysia's side of Borneo island, mainly because of open burning in Indonesia, officials in Malaysia said.

Malaysia's Department of Environment said that seven of its 51 monitoring stations nationwide recorded "unhealthy" air quality levels, while 11 were "moderate" and the remaining 33 had "good" air quality.

http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=18936

2006-08-28T09:02:00.000+08:00

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Against the backdrop of mounting complaints at home and abroad over the perils of annual haze, Indonesian law enforcers are making arrests and quizzing plantation companies suspected to be responsible for forest fires in several parts of the country.

Police have arrested 20 people in Sumatra`s Riau province and will quiz at least six plantation firms in Kalimantan over alleged roles in land and forest fires which have created haze and disturbed health, trade, land, sea and air transportations these past weeks.

The arrests were made about a week after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono voiced his dissatisfaction over regional governments` inability to prevent and overcome forest fires in their respective provinces.

"We can still witness various fires in the last several weeks. We really regret their occurrence because all of these are related to the lack of responsibility, attention and leadership of the regional governments concerned," the President told Regional Representatives Council (DPD) at the parliament building last week.

The President had previously in June called on ministers concerned, provincial governors, district chiefs and mayors to jointly prevent and anticipate forest and land fires and to handle them whenever they occur.

In order to take follow up steps, the President summoned his relevant ministers to instruct legal sanction against plantation owners who used fires to clear forest areas for plantations. "Those who set forests on fire, mostly big plantation companies, must get legal sanction," Communications Minister Sofyan Djalil said quoting the Head of State.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla has also ordered police to take firm actions against those responsible for forest fires. "I have ordered the Riau Police chief to take stern actions and I have received reports that about 20 forest fire suspects in the province had been arrested," Kalla said.

The Vice President said police made the arrests on the suspects who included Indonesian businessmen and of a Malaysian plantation company.

In West Kalimantan, police will query executives of six plantation companies in whose operational areas hot spots have been detected.

The police would thus ask help from civil servant interrogators and the Environment Ministry to observe the location of the hot spots, West Kalimantan Police chief Brig Gen Nanan Soekarna was quoted as saying.

Nanan said the six plantation companies were located in Pontianak and Sambas districts. The civil servants interrogator team and the Environment Ministry officials would arrive here to conduct the inspection on Tuesday (Aug 29).

Law No. 23/1997 on environmental management stipulates a 10-year imprisonment and US$50,000-fine for people setting forests and land on fire for land clearing.

The law was enacted when the ASEAN region was plagued by the worst-ever haze crisis that cost it some 9.0 billion dollars due to air travel, tourism and other business disruptions in 1997-98.

Annual forest fires in Indonesia notably in Sumatra and Kalimantan always affect its neighboring countries as Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam and Thailand.

At Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) talks held in Kuala Lumpur last week, Malaysian Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz said that Indonesia should take tough action to resolve the recurring issue.

The current measures by the Indonesian government, however, are not being taken because of overseas pressure only but also because of the perils suffered at home.

"The government was making the efforts not because of pressure from overseas but because of the interest of people at home," Vice President Jusuf Kalla said.

"It is not Kuala Lumpur alone which has complained. It was the people of Riau (Sumatra) and Pontianak (West Kalimantan) who have complained in the first place. Compared to the disturbance in Kuala Lumpur, the one in Pontianak has caused students to be unable to go to school," the Vice President said.

He was referring to the haze problem which has been taking place in the five provinces of Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, Central Kalimantan and West Kalimantan.

In recent days, the forest fire-triggered haze has created health problems and delayed flights in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

Thick haze blanketed Jambi on Friday causing visibility to drop to between 200 and 250 meters. Motorists have to turn on their head lights in order to avoid collision as the haze was obstructing visibility.

The local health service reported that over the past week the number of people suffering from respiratory infection increased to about 10,000 people. People in Riau province have also suffered from respiratory infection.

Airport, river and sea transportation activities from and to Jambi during the past few days were also disturbed.

Even in West Kalimantan, visibility was down to less than the normal standard of 800 meters on Thursday, leading to the suspension of flights from and to the provincial capital Pontianak.

Two airplanes plying the Jakarta-Pontianak route aborted their flights when they were on their way to the capital of West Kalimantan after visibility in Supadio airport was down to 400 meters on Thursday. "With a visibility of only 400 meters, the life of passengers are at stake," officials said.

President Yudhoyono ordered Chief Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie to conduct cloud seeding and to drop water bombs in order to put out forest fires. For this purpose, the government has set aside Rp1 billion to Rp2 billion to finance the cloud seeding.

Hercules planes will be used to drop water bombs to the scenes of hotposts. "Each of the planes would carry about 8,000 liters of water to be dropped over the scene of forest fires," State Minister of Research and Technology Kusmayanto Kadiman said meanwhile. (*)

Source: Antara News

Malaysians involve in forest fire in Indonesia

2006-08-26T12:30:00.000+08:00

Scores of Malaysian businessmen involved in forest fire in Indonesia's Riau province, which cause haze covers the province and neighboring Malaysia, Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla said Friday.

Kalla made the statement a day after his visit to the province.

"Yesterday I got a report from the governor of Riau province, that they have arrested more than 20 people,...there are some Malaysian plantation businessmen," he told reporters here.

The vice president said that authorities would beef up law enforcement to prevent such kind of annual problem.

The Indonesian government bans the practice of using fire to clear land, but the enforcement of the law remains weak, many violations still occur.

Haze in the provinces of Riau, Jambi in the Sumatra island and in West Kalimantan province in Borneo island have thickened and spread to neighboring country of Malaysia recently.

In 1997 and 1998 choking haze caused mainly by forest fires in Indonesia covered parts of Southeast Asia for months, causing the region loss of some billion U.S. dollars due to a disruption of air traffic and other business activity.

Source: Xinhua

Indonesia to drop water bombs to douse forest fires

2006-08-26T09:20:00.000+08:00

JAKARTA, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Indonesia will drop water bombs and try to induce rain via cloud seeding next week in a bid to douse forest fires blanketing parts of Southeast Asia with choking smoke, officials said on Friday.

Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie said water bombs, each containing between 1,000 and 3,000 litres, would be dropped from military cargo planes in fire-ravaged areas on Sumatra and Borneo islands.

"Artificial rain can't 100 percent extinguish hot spots but it can minimise the number," Bakrie added.

The government would also handout leaflets reminding locals about the danger of clearing land using fires.

Bakrie said seven plantation companies were being investigated on suspicions they had used slash-and-burn methods to clear land.

It is illegal to carry out slash-and-burn land clearing in Indonesia, but prosecutions take time and few have stuck.

Bakrie told reporters Malaysia and Thailand had offered to help fight the fires.

Technology Minister Kusmayanto Kadiman, who was also at the news conference, said the operations would start on Monday.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered officials to step up efforts to tackle the problem, his spokesman said.

"We regret the fact that the haze has caused inconvenience to our neighbours. We have made a commitment that there should be no more haze this year," Dino Patti Djalal said.

Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar told Reuters in an interview on Thursday that the fires would disappear in two years. His target is more optimistic than some other officials, who see the seasonal fires going on for years.

(Reporting by Muhamad Ari and Muklis Ali, writing by Ahmad Pathoni; ahmad.pathoni@reuters.com; Reuters Messaging; ahmad.pathoni.reuters.com@reuters.net; tel +6221 384 6364))

Source: AlertNet

ASEAN says Indonesia must act as haze hurts region

2006-08-24T21:31:00.000+08:00

Kuala Lumpur (ANTARA News) - Indonesia's neighbours on Thursday urged it to curb the region's annual haze crisis by cracking down on forest fires, warning that the choking pollution is hurting economies and deterring tourists.

Smoke from fires raging on the jungle-covered Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo has worsened this week, casting a pall over neighbouring Malaysia.

Singapore and Thailand have also been affected in previous years.

As Malaysian business groups complained about the impact on the economy,
the country's outspoken trade minister Rafidah Aziz said tough action was
needed to resolve the recurring issue.

"We have to contend that this is something that will happen unless real
serious efforts are being put by the governments where the haze originates," she told reporters at Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) talks.

Rafidah said open burning must be contained as it was hurting members of
the bloc including Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Thailand.

"It is impacting on the region," she warned. "Of course for ASEAN as a
whole, it is a deterrent to tourists and travellers. The haze is happening for years now.

"When the haze comes from the neighbouring country, then the country must
attempt to enforce to fight the forest fires," she said.

Syed Amin AlJeffri, co-chairman of the ASEAN Business Advisory Council,
said the haze, which in recent days has enveloped Kuala Lumpur, was hurting retail business in Malaysia.

"Haze of course is not good for health. So tourists are keeping off the
streets. This is bad for retail business," he told AFP.

Air quality has worsened in peninsular Malaysia in recent days, nearing
unhealthy levels and obscuring views of the capital's iconic Petronas Twin Towers which is next to the ASEAN talks venue.

Last August a state of emergency was declared in two locations on
Malaysia's west coast when the haze sent pollution levels soaring to extremely hazardous levels.

Indonesia trying hard

Indonesia's Trade Minister Mari Elka Pangestu defended her country's
efforts to tackle open burning on plantations.

"We try hard to stop the illegal fires," she told reporters late
Wednesday.

Indonesia has said it will deploy hundreds of police and troops to fight
fires raging on Sumatra island.

ASEAN secretary general Ong Keng Yong, said the bloc had a policy on zero
burning but enforcement was crucial.

"The most important thing is we must have enforcement," he said.

The Indonesian government has outlawed the use of fire for land clearing
but weak enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.

In 1997-98 the region's worst-ever haze crisis cost it some 9.0 billion
dollars by disrupting air travel, tourism and other business.

ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. (*)

Source: The Antara News

Hoping Indonesia will do its part in tackling fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan

2006-08-20T23:40:00.000+08:00

MALAYSIA is hoping that Indonesia will do its part to tackle the raging fire in Sumatra and Kalimantan so that the country will not enveloped in haze this time around every year.

Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said:

"As far as we are concerned, there is not much that we could do about the Indonesian fires.

"Our ability to resolve the problem will largely depend on the determination of the Indonesian government to address the matter. This will be our major challenge," he said.

Najib was speaking to reporters after opening the Umno Ledang division delegates' conference at Dewan Jubli Intan here today. Also present was Menteri Besar Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman.

He was commenting on the ongoing haze problem affecting many parts of the country, especially Sarawak which saw the air pollution index hitting the highest at 161 in Kuching on Thursday.

Source: The New Strait Times

926 hotspots detected in W Kalimantan forest

2006-08-16T10:40:00.000+08:00

Pontianak (ANTARA News) - The Regional Environmental Impact Control Agency (Bapedalda) in West Kalimantan has detected 926 hotspots in the province in the last four days, but no suspects have been determined so far.

"We have not determined the culprits suspected of sparking the hotspots as it is not easy to prove those responsible for the creation of the fire sources," head of West Kalimantan Bapedalda Tri Budiarto told reporters here Tuesday.

Profound and intensive investigation into the case based on the condition of the field is needed to find out the suspects, according the head of Bapedalda, which had up to Monday, Aug 14, detected 926 hotspots found in all regencies in the province.

Of the 926 hotspots, 215 are detected in Ketapang regency, 210 in Pontianak, 209 in Sambas, 69 in Sanggau, 67 in Sintang, 63 in Kapuas Hulu, 46 in Landak, 26 in Bengkayang, 19 in Melawi and one in Sekadau.

Pontianak-based Bapedalda has detected fire sources not only in West Kalimantan, but also in neighboring regions, including 302 in Central Kalimantan province and 59 hotspots in Sarawak, East Malaysia.

Based on NOAA satellite?s detection, a hot spot heating up to a temperature of 316? Kelvin covers about 1.2 ha of land. With that assumption, the 926 hotspots detected on Monday cover 1,111.2 ha, mostly located in the forests and plantations, according to Budiarto.(*)

Source: Antara News

Fires in Indonesia too scattered to cause Malaysia haze

2006-08-11T13:03:00.000+08:00

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia denied Wednesday that forest fires on Sumatra and Borneo islands were responsible for causing a haze which has smothered areas in nearby Malaysia this week.

Satellite imaging showed about 100 scattered hotspots caused by land and
forest fires around the main town of Pekanbaru in Sumatra's Riau province on Wednesday, said forestry ministry spokesman Masyud.

But he said the hotspots were too spread out to have caused the haze that
hit Kuala Lumpur and its surrounds on Tuesday, Masyud said.

"There are also hotspots caused by forest fires found on the Malaysian
peninsula and in the Philippines. We have some too, but they are not so many and too scattered," Masyud told AFP.

Masyud said lesser forest fires were also burning in Indonesia's West
Kalimantan province on Borneo.

The meteorological office in Pekanbaru however said that satellite imaging showed about 200 hotspots burning in four separate areas in Riau, with the largest located in Indragiri Hilir district, southwest of Malaysia's Malacca.

Visibility in the provincial capital was limited to one kilometer (0.62
miles) at 10:00 am (0300 GMT) on Wednesday, he said.

"The haze is quite thick although there was some rain yesterday (Tuesday)," an official with the agency who gave his name as Ibnu told AFP.

"But wind directions are changing all the time, so it's a bit difficult to blame the (fires) for being the cause of the Malaysian haze," he said.

The air pollution index in Kuala Lumpur hit 83 on Tuesday morning,
according to Malaysia's environment department. A reading of 101 to 200 on the index is classified as "unhealthy", while a moderate reading is between 51 and 100.

In western Port Klang the reading was 89, while in several other western
areas it was at moderate levels.

Indonesia has banned the practice of using fire to clear land but
enforcement remains weak.

Burning in Indonesia and some parts of Malaysia to clear land for crops
causes an annual haze that afflicts countries in the region, including
Singapore and Thailand. (*)

Sumatra haze reaches Malaysia, Thailand

2006-08-01T09:27:00.000+08:00

Haze from forest fires blanketing much of Sumatra has started to spill over into neighbouring countries, posing a health risk and disrupting flights both at home and abroad, local officials said Sunday (July 30).

Over 130 fire "hot spots" have been detected in Riau province in the last few days, affecting some 3,000 hectares of land, including one protected forest.

"Forest fires have occurred in Riau and North Sumatra, which is an annual occurrence," Nursiwan Taqwim, head of the Sumatra Regional Center for Environmental Management, told The Jakarta Post.

Haze has blanketed the Riau capital of Pekanbaru and parts of neighbouring North Sumatra and Jambi provinces, forcing thousands to wear masks and postpone air travel.

"I actually don't like to wear a mask but I have no choice because I don't want to risk respiratory problems," Umar, a Pekanbaru resident, told a local newspaper.

Malaysia's meteorological authority said haze had reduced visibility and contaminated air in Port Klang, Penang and Perak -- all on the Malay Peninsula -- as well as parts of southern Thailand. Thai health authorities have warned people in southern Thailand to stay indoors to avoid the health-threatening haze.

Indonesian Forestry Minister M.S. Kaban said in a radio interview Sunday that not all of the haze affecting neighbouring countries came from Indonesia. "Malaysia also has hot spots, so it would be unfair to blame it solely on us," he said.

The Health Ministry's director for environmental health, Wan Alkadri, told the Post the forest fires released highly dangerous pollutants into the air, which could cause breathing problems and cancer.

Motorists in Pekanbaru have been forced to turn on their vehicles' lights during the day because visibility is only 50 metres.

Nursiwan said most of the fires were in Pelawan, Rokan Hilir and Rokan Hulu regencies. These include fires in the protected forest around Mt. Mahato.

"Most of the blazes were started by local residents converting forest into plantations," he said.

The Forestry Ministry's director for forest fire control, Tri Wibowo, said with the help of about 300 forest firefighters and hundreds of local volunteers, the haze could be stopped in the next two weeks.

He said to prevent a repeat of the annual haze, his office would step up efforts to improve farmers' environmental awareness.

"All of the forest fires here have been started by residents. So the key is to get farmers, as well as plantation and logging companies, not to convert land using fire," he said.

Riau Police have questioned one district head and two village chiefs for failing to prevent forest fires in their areas of jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, environmental group Greenomics Indonesia has urged the government to stop issuing licenses to convert forests, saying this only contributes to the annual fires.

A lawmaker from the House of Representatives' Commission VII for the environment, Ahmad Farial, said the legislature would consider ratifying the Asean Trans-Boundary Haze Pollution agreement, with the support of regional administrations, particularly those in regions prone to forest fires.

"If we ratify the agreement, Indonesia will get support from Asean governments to combat forest fires," he told Antara.

Source:The Korean Herald

Haze Covers Riau, 10 Provinces Ready For The Smog

2006-07-29T10:56:00.000+08:00

JAKARTA, July 28 (Bernama) -- The haze covering Pekan Baru, the capital of Riau in Sumatera Island, is reported to have worsened up till Friday evening, limiting visibility to around 50 to 80 metres only.

Apart from drivers who had to switch on their car headlights when driving in daytime, at least five flights were postponed at the Sultan Syarief Kassim Airport Friday when visibility dropped to 30 metres.

The MetroTV reported that the authorities in Riau had handed out face masks to its residents to lessen the health hazards, particularly to respirations, due to the haze.

The haze, which enveloped Pekan Baru since last week, was said to be the result of forest and peat soil burning, a traditional method still used by some farmers to clear new lands to plant crops.

At least 60 hot spots were detected as a result of forest fires, according to the TV station.

By Mohd Nasir Yusoff

Indonesian Forestry Ministry's Forests and Nature Protection Director-General, Arman Mallolongan, was quoted as saying that the local fire brigade had positioned itself in 10 provinces which were fire-prone, including North Sumatera, South Sumatera, Jambi, Riau, the whole of Kalimantan and South Sulawesi.

The haze also covered several towns in West Sumatera, including its capital Padang, for the past two days due to forest and peat soil fires.

According to the Padang Geophysics and Meteorological Department, there were about 57 hot spots in Sumatera base on the satellite monitoring.

The haze, which covered several provinces in Sumatera Island, usually would be carried by wind to Malaysia, its nearest neighbour across the Straits of Malacca.

-- BERNAMA

Haze from Indonesia persists over parts of Malaysia

2006-07-21T22:05:00.000+08:00

Haze has persisted over parts of Malaysia due to smoke from forest fires in Indonesia but there are hopes of rain to clear the air, an official said.
.
Parts of the northern resort island of Penang, and Perak, Selangor and Kedah states were suffering poor visibility from smoke particles being blown from Indonesia's Sumatra island by southwesterly winds.
.
"There are more hotspots in Sumatra. The southwesterly winds are blowing the burning particles to Malaysia," an official with the meteorological services department told AFP.
.
But the official said some rain was expected later Wednesday which may bring some respite. "Hopefully, it will reduce the haze," she said on condition of anonymity.
.
The Department of Environment failed to release the country's daily air quality index at the scheduled time due to what was described as a technical problem.
.
But among the worst affected areas with visibility at five kilometres (three miles) or less were Bayan Lepas and Butterworth in Penang, Sitiawan in Perak and Langkawi in Kedah, the official said.
.
On Tuesday air quality in parts of Malaysia, including the major shipping centre of Port Klang west of the capital, plunged to unhealthy levels.
.
Meteorological authorities said the first haze seen this year, which is also affecting southern Thailand, could sweep over the Malay peninsula as it did in 2005.
.
Burning in Indonesia and some parts of Malaysia to clear land for crops causes an annual haze that afflicts countries in the region, including Singapore and Thailand.
.
Last August a state of emergency was declared in Port Klang and another town on Malaysia's west coast as pollution soared to extremely hazardous levels. — AFP
Haze has persisted over parts of Malaysia due to smoke from forest fires in Indonesia but there are hopes of rain to clear the air, an official said.
.
Parts of the northern resort island of Penang, and Perak, Selangor and Kedah states were suffering poor visibility from smoke particles being blown from Indonesia's Sumatra island by southwesterly winds.
.
"There are more hotspots in Sumatra. The southwesterly winds are blowing the burning particles to Malaysia," an official with the meteorological services department told AFP.
.
But the official said some rain was expected later Wednesday which may bring some respite. "Hopefully, it will reduce the haze," she said on condition of anonymity.
.
The Department of Environment failed to release the country's daily air quality index at the scheduled time due to what was described as a technical problem.
.
But among the worst affected areas with visibility at five kilometres (three miles) or less were Bayan Lepas and Butterworth in Penang, Sitiawan in Perak and Langkawi in Kedah, the official said.
.
On Tuesday air quality in parts of Malaysia, including the major shipping centre of Port Klang west of the capital, plunged to unhealthy levels.
.
Meteorological authorities said the first haze seen this year, which is also affecting southern Thailand, could sweep over the Malay peninsula as it did in 2005.
.
Burning in Indonesia and some parts of Malaysia to clear land for crops causes an annual haze that afflicts countries in the region, including Singapore and Thailand.
.
Last August a state of emergency was declared in Port Klang and another town on Malaysia's west coast as pollution soared to extremely hazardous levels. — AFP
Haze has persisted over parts of Malaysia due to smoke from forest fires in Indonesia but there are hopes of rain to clear the air, an official said.
.
Parts of the northern resort island of Penang, and Perak, Selangor and Kedah states were suffering poor visibility from smoke particles being blown from Indonesia's Sumatra island by southwesterly winds.
.
"There are more hotspots in Sumatra. The southwesterly winds are blowing the burning particles to Malaysia," an official with the meteorological services department told AFP.
.
But the official said some rain was expected later Wednesday which may bring some respite. "Hopefully, it will reduce the haze," she said on condition of anonymity.
.
The Department of Environment failed to release the country's daily air quality index at the scheduled time due to what was described as a technical problem.
.
But among the worst affected areas with visibility at five kilometres (three miles) or less were Bayan Lepas and Butterworth in Penang, Sitiawan in Perak and Langkawi in Kedah, the official said.
.
On Tuesday air quality in parts of Malaysia, including the major shipping centre of Port Klang west of the capital, plunged to unhealthy levels.
.
Meteorological authorities said the first haze seen this year, which is also affecting southern Thailand, could sweep over the Malay peninsula as it did in 2005.
.
Burning in Indonesia and some parts of Malaysia to clear land for crops causes an annual haze that afflicts countries in the region, including Singapore and Thailand.
.
Last August a state of emergency was declared in Port Klang and another town on Malaysia's west coast as pollution soared to extremely hazardous levels. — AFP

Source: Today Online

Gerakan Youth Wants Haze Problem Seriously Addressed

2006-07-21T17:26:00.000+08:00

KUALA LUMPUR, July 21 (Bernama) -- The Gerakan Youth Environment Bureau wants the transboundary haze pollution caused by open burning and forest fires in neighbouring Indonesia to be addressed seriously.

Its chairman, David Ang Chin Tat said Malaysia had been affected by transboundary haze pollution originating from the country annually.

"It is jeopardising our agriculture and tourism industry, and it also increases our medical expenses," he said when contacted Friday, adding that the culprits should "be stripped and whipped".

For that matter, he said, the Transboundary Haze Pollution in Southeast Asia agreement designed to prevent forest fires and address the threat of transboundary haze pollution, should be revisited.

Ang said it should be compulsory for large operators to explore and implement zero-burning land clearing or use techniques that produced less smoke.

The bureau suggested that incentives be given to companies seeking alternatives in disposing of their timber waste.

In a statement today, the bureau suggested that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi take the lead in Asean to start a serious dialogue with Indonesia on transboundary haze pollution.

It suggested the creation of a joint monitoring, prevention, reporting and fighting of fire community to monitor the Asean haze problem.

It urged Asean Senior Officials on Environment (ASOEN) to reinstate or explain the objectives which were formulated in the agreement.

The bureau also hoped for prevention of land and forest fires through better management policies and enforcement, establishment of operational mechanism to monitor land and forest fires, and stronger regional land and forest fire-fighting capability and other mitigating measures.

Source: Bernama

The Dialogue Box: Hazy come, hazy go

2006-07-21T14:29:00.000+08:00

COMPARABLE to a bad case of syphilis, Malaysia’s chronic haze problem seems to be a condition the country is unable to shake (the venereal disease analogy is apt, considering, among other things, the peninsula’s decidedly phallic physiognomy, which droops longingly in the direction of Sumatra’s fiery, fertile forests).
And much like a syphilis sufferer, Malaysia seems to be coyly hesitant to openly discuss the treatment, for fear of embarrassing the negligent partner from whom the shameful boo-boo was contracted.

Well I, for one, am tired of ignoring the proverbial syphilitic elephant in the room, and will risk inhaling lungfuls of toxic air to express my frustration over the haze situation.

Yes, I understand that seasonal meteorological factors beyond human control have a hand in the haze calamity, but it has been widely acknowledged that Man is the flammable material which adds fuel to the ‘Eternal Flame’.

-by Jafwan Jaafar, Assistant lifestyle editor -

Indeed, there is nothing natural about this disaster. But authorities, perhaps blinded by the acrid smoke of ‘diplomacy’, continue to make only showy attempts at extinguishing the fire.

Our leaders instinctively recoil each time the runny-nosed and watery-eyed populace yelps over the haze, and respond by patronisingly assuring us that the Government is putting all its efforts into solving the problem, manfully sweating it out in "discussions with the Indonesian Government" on the issue.

But the haze’s on-time "Broadway revival" demonstrates that the "discussions" are just smoke blown into our irritated eyes.

So if you’ll be doing nothing concrete to address the ‘burning’ issue, dear authorities, then you can save your collective breaths — you’ll need to, to survive the coming, smoggy months.

source: Malay Mail

Malaysia, Indonesia join forces to dampen haze problem

2006-07-21T11:45:00.000+08:00

Kuala Lumpur (ANTARA News) - Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed to join forces to stamp out fires in oil palm plantations which are contributing to the region's annual haze problem, a Malaysian minister said Thursday.

Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Peter Chin said plantations would have to fall in line with both countries' laws which ban open burning, partly blamed for the latest haze choking parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

"Our Malaysian companies must strictly comply with Indonesian laws on open burning," Chin told reporters after returning from a July 18 meeting with his counterpart in Indonesia.

The two countries had agreed to "strictly implement the policies of banning open burning in both countries in the effort to contain the fire and the haze occurrence," AFP reported quoting a ministry statement.

Most of the fires are in Indonesia but Malaysian companies are venturing
into their Southeast Asian neighbour, with more than 20 companies currently involved in oil palm planting there.

Last year, haze from fires on Indonesia's Sumatra island hit Kuala Lumpur
and towns in Malaysia's north and its west coast, as well as parts of
Thailand.

Malaysian firms operating in Sumatra were accused of contributing to the
haze by conducting open burning.

Chin said the bilateral effort would see monitoring and enforcement in both countries, and information sharing which would lead to prosecutions.

Under Malaysian laws, plantations caught burning land to make way for oil
palm crops can be stripped of their operating licenses and face hefty fines.

Indonesia introduced a similar law in 2004 which imposes a maximum 10-year jail term and 10 billion rupiah (1.09 million dollars) in fines on plantations that defy the regulation.

However, Chin said that Malaysian companies were not entirely responsible
for burning on plantation land in Indonesia, and levelled blame on Indonesians living on the land.

"The land that is supposed to belong to their plantation companies are
actually inhabited by some of the local people. So there is a land dispute of sorts," he said.

Haze caused by burning in Indonesia and some parts of Malaysia to make way for crops is an annual problem that afflicts countries in the region including Singapore and Thailand. (*)

Source: Antara News

Selangor DOE loses open burning cases in court

2006-07-21T11:44:00.000+08:00

SHAH ALAM: The Selangor Department of Environment (DOE) was dealt a blow when all the 22 cases of open burning brought to the courts were given a discharge not amounting to an acquittal.

“Most of them were because of land title problems. Ownership could not be proved because the parcels of land where the fires started had not been given individual titles yet,” said Selangor DOE director Che Asmah Ibrahim yesterday.

She said the department had sought the cooperation of land offices to trace the owners and check on the status of titles, especially in such hot spots as the farming lands of Kampung Johan Setia in Klang and Sungai Belangkan in Sepang.

These areas are a major annual headache for Selangor DOE because farmers, without fail, take advantage of the hot season to conduct open burning to fertilise the soil.

Although enforcement has become more stringent, farmers there still conduct open burning.

Che Asmah said she was pleased to learn that land in Johan Setia had been allocated individual titles.

“Under our environment laws, we can take action against land owners for allowing fires to start on their properties regardless of who the culprits are,” she said when announcing the integrated operations to detect open burning.

The agencies involved are police, the Fire and Rescue Department, Agriculture Department, local councils and Rela.

Meanwhile, the API reading for Port Klang and Kuala Selangor briefly touched the unhealthy level of 100 at 11am yesterday.

The Selangor DOE can be reached at 03-551 97233 (until 9pm) and the toll-free number 1-800-88-2727 (until midnight).

Source: The Star

Indonesian Forest Fire Lifts Haze In South Thai

2006-07-20T23:13:00.000+08:00

SONGKHLA, July 20 (Bernama) -- The Indonesian forest fire haze which has enveloped in southern Thailand, Songkhla in smog for some days, began to lift due to rain on Tuesday night.

According to Thailand news agency (TNA) report on Wednesday, the haze has lessened the haze, improving visibility and bringing welcome relief for people suffering from respiratory ailments.

The local meteorological office warned although the strong southwestern wind which has been carrying dust particles from Sumatra have weakened, it is still possible that the haze will return as some of the fire have not been put off.

The news report quoted Dr.Kritha Thamkampee, a lung specialist at Songkha Nakharin Hospital as saying that the hospital is surveying patients with respiratory disease which may have increased due to the blanket of smog.

The hospital also advised patients to avoid exposure to the smog to prevent their symptoms from becoming aggravated.

-- BERNAMA

Smog could reach Singapore

2006-07-20T15:38:00.000+08:00

Singapore (dpa) - The smog sparked by forest fires in Indonesia, now blanketing areas of Malaysia and southern Thailand, could also reach Singapore if winds switch direction, meteorologists warned on Thursday.

While winds which have so far pushed the haze away from the city- state are likely to remain in the short term, Singapore could still be moderately affected, the National Environmental Agency (NEA) said.

"We are anticipating that Singapore could experience some days where the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) could hit moderate levels," said Foong Chee Leong, director-general of the NEA's meteorological services.

Air quality is considered good if the PSI remains below 50. The moderate range is 50 to 100, while over 100 is considered unhealthy.

Air quality has already reached unhealthy levels in parts of Malaysia, including Selangor, the Malacca Strait, Penang, Kedah, as well as in southern Thailand.

The smog was triggered by around 170 forest fires burning on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, allegedly started by farmers seeking to clear the land.

The degree and location of the haze will depend not only on the wind direction but the number of "hot spots" in Indonesia, the NEA said.

The NEA is providing and exchanging information with Indonesia to help authorities deal with the season's forest fires.

A network of informants is in the process of identifying individual landowners and concession owners who are responsible, Rully Syumanda, of the Indonesian Forum for Environment, told The Straits Times. The forum represents 450 grassroots environmental organizations.

Commercial entities such as plantations have been held responsible for 80 per cent of forest fires started in previous years.

An inter-ministry task force will go into action should the haze threaten Singapore.

"We cannot afford to wait for the air to hit unhealthy levels before moving," said Loh Ah Tuan, the NEA's deputy chief executive.

Source: Bangkok Post

KUALA LUMPUR: We’re back to hazy days again.

2006-07-20T12:41:00.000+08:00

As of 5pm yesterday, the Air Pollutant Index (API) in three areas breached the 100-moderate mark to enter the "unhealthy" level.

This was much lower than last year when a state of emergency was declared in Port Klang and Kuala Selangor when API readings breached the 500 (hazardous) mark.

The areas affected yesterday were Sri Manjung in Perak, Seberang Jaya in Prai and Port Klang in Selangor.

However, weather changes were expected to alter the API readings, Meteorological Services Department Central Forecast Office principal assistant director Mohd Helmi Abdullah said.

Rain is expected over the next three days as the current south-westerly wind changes direction to a south-easterly one.

"There should be temporary relief based on the changing weather conditions," he said.

The change in wind direction was why the north-western states were being affected by the haze.

Department director-general Dr Yap Kok Seng said cloud-seeding would begin in areas posting a continuous API reading of between 100 and 150 over a 72-hour period.

He said dry weather in the coming months would also worsen the haze caused by open burning in Sumatra.

Reduced rainfall was expected in most parts of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in coming months, Yap said.

He added that drier conditions were also expected in central Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sarawak.

Helmi said there were 12 hotspots in Sumatra, 64 in Borneo and none in Peninsular Malaysia as at 5pm yesterday. This was an improvement over the 29 in Sumatra, 134 in Borneo and one in the peninsular on Monday.

Though the hotspots were reducing in number, Helmi cautioned that the lower readings could be due to cloud cover.

He said visibility levels were falling in certain northern States with Butterworth and Alor Star recording visibility of two kilometres as at 1pm yesterday.

Visibility in Chuping, Perlis, stood at four kilometres, six kilometres in Perai, eight kilometres at Bayan Lepas and three kilometres in Sitiawan, Perak.

In most other places, visibility was more than 10 kilometres.

"The slight haze we are experiencing now is the transboundary haze from Indonesia. Open burning locally also contributes to the problem," Helmi said.

Visibility in Penang was eight kilometres at 2pm yesterday, an improvement over a three-kilometre reading at 8am.

Forecasts by the State Meteorological Services department indicate the southwesterly winds which cause dust from Sumatra to be blown here, will weaken as the week progresses.

Its director S. Santhiran said the department expected the haze to lessen due to weaker winds.

At the Bayan Lepas International Airport, a spokesman said airport operations were proceeding smoothly with flights taking off and landing on schedule.

Yet despite the fears of a repeat of last year, open burning is still being carried out locally.

This was evident during an air surveillance over Selangor conducted by the Department of Environment (DOE) yesterday.

The New Straits Times team that tagged along found open burning in peat ground areas of Johan Setia in Klang as well as Sungai Belankan and Ulu Chuchuh in Sepang.

Source: New Strait Times

Singapore says air quality will not reach unhealthy levels during haze

2006-07-20T12:37:00.000+08:00

SINGAPORE (AP) - Singapore can expect to be affected by haze from forest fires in neighboring Indonesia in coming months, but the air quality is unlikely to reach unhealthy levels, the city-state's meteorological service said.

The haze often occurs during the region's midyear dry season, when farmers - mostly on Indonesia's Sumatra island - set illegal brush fires to clear land for planting.

Wind conditions have kept the haze blanketing areas of Malaysia and Thailand away from Singapore so far, but a shift in wind direction to the west would blow the haze toward the island, Foong Chee Leong, director general of the National Environment Agency's Meteorological Services Division, said Wednesday.

"Our assessment is that (air quality) will move from the good range to the moderate range level,'' Foong said.

"Going by the weather outlook, it is unlikely that it will go into the 'unhealthy' range.''

The meteorological service identified 279 hotspots burning on Sumatra from satellite images taken July 5, but the number dropped to about 170 on Monday due to recent rains, Foong said.

Southeast Asian countries including Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore experienced their worst air quality levels in 1997, when brush fires in Indonesia destroyed some 10 million hectares (25 million acres) of vegetation, cloaking much of the region with haze.

Source: The Star

Firefighters battle blazes in Indonesian Borneo, Sumatra

2006-07-19T19:53:00.000+08:00

More than 1,500 firefighters are battling scores of forest fires raging on Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra island, as a haze envelops neighboring Malaysia and Thailand.

Indonesia's foreign ministry says satellite images show some 567 "hot spots" in Riau province on Sumatra as well as Kalimantan in Borneo.

Spokesman Masyud says not all of the spots are necessarily still burning.

Another forestry ministry official, Haryanto Wahyu Sukotyo, says most of the fires appear to have been started to clear land in commercial timber or palm oil plantations.

Five provinces in Thailand, including the holiday isle of Phuket, have been hit by haze from the fires, as has neighbouring Malaysia.

In May Indonesia's agriculture minister pledged to enforce a 2004 law, that imposes a maximum 10-year jail term and $US1.1 million in fines on plantations that defy regulations against using fire to clear land.

Source:
ABC Asia Pacific TV / Radio Australia

Haze make air quality "unhealthy" in parts of Malaysia

2006-07-19T13:55:00.000+08:00

Kuala Lumpur (ANTARA News) - Air quality in parts of Malaysia including Port Klang west of the capital has plunged to unhealthy levels after being hit by haze caused by forest fires in Indonesia, officials said Tuesday.

Meteorological authorities also warned that the haze, the first seen this year which is also affecting southern Thailand, could sweep over the Malay peninsula as it did in 2005.

The environment department said air quality in several locations including in the resort state of Penang, Perak state which borders Thailand, and the major shipping centre of Port Klang had registered unhealthy levels.

The meteorological department said that if the situation worsened, it could carry out rain-seeding activities to try to disperse the haze which is being caused by forest fires in Indonesia's Sumatra and Borneo islands.

"It is a transboundary haze. In view of the current dry spell, we

anticipate the haze to sweep across the whole peninsula. That is our concern," said Mohamad Helmi Abdullah from the department's central forecast office.

The majority of Malaysia's 26 million population live on the peninsula, especially on the western side facing Indonesia's Sumatra island.

Mohamad Helmi told AFP that authorities have detected 29 "hotspots" or fire zones in Sumatra and 134 on Indonesia's side of Borneo island, and that the dry spell could last for another three months.

Visibility Tuesday was reduced to two kilometers (1.24 miles) in

Butterworth in Penang state and Alor Star in Kedah, and to three kilometers in Sitiawan in Perak state, he added.

Southern Thailand has also been affected by haze from the forest fires.

Health officials urged vulnerable residents to stay inside Tuesday as air quality fell to potentially hazardous levels in some areas.

Some 1,500 Indonesian firefighters are battling the fires on Sumatra and Borneo islands. Burning in Indonesia and some parts of Malaysia to clear land for crops causes an annual haze that afflicts countries in the region, including Singapore and Thailand.

Last August a state of emergency was declared in Port Klang and another town on Malaysia's west coast which bore the brunt of haze that sent pollution levels soaring to extremely hazardous levels.

The Food and Agriculture Organization in 2005 called on Asian nations to enforce bans on open burning to prevent the annual haze crisis.

Source: Antara News

Set for another hazy spell

2006-07-19T10:03:00.000+08:00

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysians are due for another hazy spell unless the Indonesian authorities tackle the hundreds of forest fires raging in various parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan.

Although showers and thunderstorms are expected over several places along the west coast states of the peninsula and Sarawak, they will offer only temporary relief as the hot and dry weather is not expected to end until September.

Meteorological Services Department director-general Yap Kok Seng said if the situation in Indonesia did not improve, Malaysians would face a longer period of haze due to the prolonged dry and hot weather.

“However, it may not be as bad as last year because we have started taking steps and our officials are talking with our Indonesian counterparts on ways to handle the problem,” he told reporters at his office yesterday.

POOR VISIBILITY: The ferries, Pulau Rawa (left) and Pulau Kapas, transporting passengers between the mainland and the island. Note Komtar in the background which is still slightly visible in this picture taken at 4.05pm Tuesday.
“We are also prepared to carry out cloud seeding. This will be done when the Air Pollution Index (API) in a certain area reaches the unhealthy level of between 100 and 150 for a prolonged period of 72 hours or more.”

For the first time since the return of haze, three of the Department of Environment’s 51 monitoring stations – in Seberang Jaya in Penang, Port Klang and Seri Manjung in Perak – recorded readings showing an unhealthy API mark.

Thirty other monitoring stations recorded moderate API levels.

Yap said visibility in several parts of the country, including Prai, Butterworth, Chuping, Alor Star, Sitiawan and the Cameron Highlands had deteriorated to between 2km and 6km, while in Bayan Lepas and Ipoh, it was about 8km.

The hotspots detected by satellites in both Sumatra and Kalimantan, he said, had been increasing over the past six days.

The latest satellite images showed about 150 hotspots in Sumatra and more than 130 in Kalimantan.

He said Sabah and Sarawak could experience outbreaks of fire.

In Penang, Meteorological Services Department (Bayan Lepas) director S. Santhira Segaran said the situation in the state should improve over the next few days with the south-west monsoon winds expected to weaken and to blow in a westerly direction, affecting visibility in Perak and Selangor.

“We may experience some localised showers within the next few days but it won’t clear the haze. The situation will only improve if the number of hotspots can be controlled,” he said.

Source : The Star

Haze blankets parts of Thailand, Malaysia

2006-07-19T00:26:00.000+08:00

Forest fires in Indonesia are causing a thick haze in the south of Thailand and in Malaysia.

Authorities in Malaysia say air quality in parts of the country, including Port Klang west of the capital, has plunged to unhealthy levels and could sweep over the Malay peninsula.

Meanwhile, in Thailand, air quality in the southern province of Songkhla has reached potentially hazardous levels, prompting health officials in the town of Hat Yai to provide face masks.

Indonesia has deployed around 1,500 firefighters to battle hundreds of forest fires burning on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

ABC Asia Pacific TV / Radio Australia

KL to send high-level haze monitoring delegation to Indonesia

2006-07-13T21:31:00.000+08:00

PUTRAJAYA (AP): Senior Malaysian officials plan talks with their Indonesian counterparts on how to battle the smoky haze that plagues the area every year from fires on Indonesia's Sumatra island, Malaysia said Thursday.

Malaysia's minister for plantation resources and commodities, Peter Chin, said senior ministry officials were set to leave on Friday for Medan in eastern Sumatra. Chin said he plans to arrive Monday.

The haze - an annual July-September occurrence in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and nearby areas since at least 1997 - is caused by farmers in Indonesia burning brush or old crops to clear land.

Malaysian palm oil and rubber companies, operating in Indonesia, are often the ones blamed for the choking pollution in their homeland.

Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono recently said his country was ashamed to export haze to Malaysia and Singapore, its two closest neighbors.

The annual fires have become a sensitive issue between Indonesia and its neighbors, where the foul-smelling smoke has disrupted air traffic, caused health problems and damaged tourism.

Malaysia has in the past sent firefighters to help battle the blazes. (**)

from
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaillgen.asp?fileid=20060713180801&irec=0

Haze envelops Malaysia's Penang state

2006-07-07T10:10:00.000+08:00

Weather officials in Malaysia say the country's northern Penang state has been hit by haze caused by fires on Indonesia's Sumatra island.

The haze has reduced visibility in Penang to 800 metres.

Indonesia's Sumatra island is to Malaysia's west, and officials have identified 177 hotspots from fires there.

Haze caused by burning in Indonesia and some parts of Malaysia to make way for crops, is an annual problem that affects countries in the region including Singapore and Thailand.

ABC Asia Pacific TV / Radio Australia

Haze In Butterworth, Penang Island

2006-07-06T13:41:00.000+08:00

July 05, 2006 19:19 PM E-mail this news to a friend Printable version of this news

Haze In Butterworth, Penang Island

PENANG, July 5 (Bernama) -- Butterworth and Penang Island were shrouded in haze since early Wednesday, reducing visibility in the areas.

Visibility on the Penang Bridge was poor in the morning but improved in the afternoon.

In Butterworth, the visibility range was reduced to one kilometre at 8am but worsened to 800 metres an hour later, said a spokesman of the Meteorological Services Department.

However, he said, the situation improved in the afternoon and the visibility range improved to nine kilometres.

On Penang Island, the visibility range was seven kilometres at 8am and improved to nine kilometres in the afternoon.

The spokesman said the haze was believed to have been caused by the hot air from open burning in Sumatra that was being blown to Penang by the southwesterly winds.

He said satellite images indicated 177 hot spots in Sumatra, seven in Borneo and seven in Peninsular Malaysia due to open burning.

"The hot spots were detected over the last few days and the haze is expected to persist unless there is a change in the direction of the winds," he added.

-- BERNAMA

Smoke from fires cuts visibility, hits fishermen

2006-07-02T22:52:00.000+08:00

Smoke from fires cuts visibility, hits fishermen
http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/02Jul2006_news05.php

Asthmatic children warned to stay inside

By Monruedi Poonsin

Haze from wildfires in Indonesia has blanketed parts of the southern province of Satun, particularly coastal areas, causing poor visibility. Authorities have advised children with asthma or other breathing problems to stay indoors to avoid the smoky air.

Fishermen have found it difficult to go out to sea because of poor visibility caused by the drifting smoke.

Raging forest fires on Indonesia's Sumatra island is blamed for the haze, which has become an annual problem in Southeast Asia.

Jae Meed Ranwasri, a trawler captain, said the haze pollution posed a big problem for those navigating boats.

The smoke tends to thicken in the morning and in the afternoon, he said.

Mr Jae said visibility on the sea is down to only about 4.8 kilometres due to the heavy smoke which has been hanging over the province for two days.

Small trawlers setting sail without radar will run the risk of getting lost, he said.

The haze also covered parts of the Malaysian states of Kedah and Perlis.

Kochem Meenhem, deputy director of Satun's provincial education office, urged parents to take care of children with respiratory problems.

They are advised to stop engaging in activities in the open air and stay inside their homes to avoid the smoke.

He said it had yet to be confirmed whether the smoky sky was caused by a low-pressure trough or the haze from forest fires on Sumatra.

Sompong Thanasamban, head of Satun's meteorological office, said the province will continue to see cloudy skies today, with southwesterly winds of up to 40kph.

Visibility on the roads will be reduced to 10km.

Brace for water shortages

2006-03-27T08:37:00.000+08:00

The Star
27 March 2006
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/3/27/nation/13733173&sec=nation&focus=1

By DEVID RAJAH AND SA’ODAH ELIAS

PETALING JAYA: Many of the 189 river basins nationwide are in dire straits.

This warning from Department of Irrigation and Drainage director-general Datuk Keizrul Abdullah may sound extreme, but that is the reality of today.

Parts of the country, particularly the Klang Valley, he said, would be facing a water crisis as early as next year unless the agencies concerned and the people started taking serious care of rivers.

WASTE EVERYWHERE: A collector scooping up plastic bottles discarded into Sungai Selangor. The boom which stops rubbish from flowing downstream into the nearby Puncak Niaga Water Intake Station has not been cleaned for months.

“On one hand, we have river basins overburdened by problems brought about by over- development. On the other hand, the number of people dependent on these rivers keeps rising because they are attracted to the development.

“That is a recipe for disaster,” he said.

Keizrul described the problem facing the country as “a classic situation where rivers are under pressure from development.”

“We get sedimentation, we get floods, we get pollution, yet we are also taking more water from rivers, so there is less volume and in the process, the pollution gets more concentrated,” he said.

Apart from the Klang Valley, he said, water supply crises were also imminent in Penang and Malacca.

According to him, the situation was compounded by dry weather flow problems and inefficient management of water resources.

“Dry weather flow problems are particular to river basins that are over-developed as they have less ground water storage due to drainage systems that efficiently send rainwater direct into rivers and then literally to waste in the sea,” he said.

The increased water run-off – not only in terms of volume but also speed – contributed to flash floods, high sedimentation and shallow rivers, he added

“Unless this problem is tackled, there may come a time when some of our river basins will not even have enough water to reach the sea during the dry season, let alone provide water for household needs.

RIVERSIDE DUMP: Construction debris dumped along Sungai Selangor is also a source of river pollution.
”Some river basins providing clean water to the people are already reaching their limits,” he said.

Water demand for Selangor and the Federal Territories is now 2,500 million litres per day and the figure will double by 2010.

The authorities, Keizrul said, must come up with more comprehensive programmes to rid water catchment areas of polluting industries, introduce better development guidelines and control, and put in place better water management systems.

“And the people must stop treating our rivers like toilets,” he said.

Given the current situation, Keizrul said, it was high time good river management be given high priority as over 97% of the country’s water supply came from rivers while only 3% was sourced from ground water.

In view of the looming disaster, he said, the people must do their part to complement the Government’s efforts by using water efficiently and not treat rivers as dumping grounds.

“For instance, they can start by collecting and storing rain water like what our forefathers used to do and use this for washing and flushing toilets,” he said.

Keizrul also urged the Government to raise water tariffs so that the increased revenue could be used to set up a river fund to rehabilitate rivers.

“Before people get angry with me by claiming that this will burden the poor, let me also suggest that since water is a necessity, let the first 10,000 litres be free, but the tariff for usage beyond that be double the current rates,” he said.

Malaysia begins upset with forest fires in Indonesia

2006-03-19T08:52:00.000+08:00

March 15,2006
Antara News

Pekanbaru, Riau (ANTARA News) - Malaysia has expressed worry about haze that came from forest fires in Indonesian province of Riau, an Indonesian official said here Wednesday.

"Malaysian Environment Minister Datuk Isnaini told us that Malaysia has begun to feel worried about forest fires in Indonesia notably in Riau province," Riau environmental impact management agency head Khairul Zainal said after seeing off a 45-member quick reaction team (TRC) which was tasked to monitor the Bukit Batu reserved forests in Bengkalis district and put out hot spots.

Khairul said Malaysia has thus offered cooperation to put out hot spots in Riau islands and to exchange information on how to handle forest fires which have become an annual disaster in Indonesia.

Reports said that besides the annual forest fires in Indonesia poluted the air quality, it always disrupted flights in neighboring countries like Singapore and Malaysia.

He said some areas in Riau such as Senepis wildlife reserve in Dumai town and a forest area in Rupat Utara subdistrict in Bengkalis district were on fire.

The two areas are close to Malaysia`s state of Malacca, he said.

Khairul said he has told the people to help the administration to put out fires and hotspots said in order to save endangered animals like tigers and other specific fauna species from extinction.

Data of the Bengkalis district administration showed that there were 75 hot spots in Bengkalis and Rokan Hilir districts and Dumai town. (*)

Riau pledges to put out forest fires

2006-03-19T08:51:00.000+08:00

News Strait Time
By Ridzwan Abdullah

SEREMBAN, Tues. Riau’s top leader today gave an assurance that the provincial Government would act aggressively to put out fires which have been blazing in some 20,000 hectares of forests in the province over the last two weeks.

Riau Governor Rusli Zainal said the Indonesian army, police, firefighters and non-governmental organisations were already in the affected areas.

Special teams known as Fire-Fighting Co-ordination Squads have been set up in each of Riau’s 11 districts.

This underscored the Riau Government’s commitment in tackling the problem, he added.

Rusli, however, said unlike most of the previous incidents in the region where the fires were started deliberately, the blazes this time were caused by peat fires.

"The region is experiencing a severe drought at this point, and with peat soil covering most areas, fires such as this can be triggered at any time," he said when met at the Malay and Islamic World Secretariat (DMDI) seminar here today.

Rusli is the deputy president of the Malacca-based secretariat set up in 2000 with the aim of providing aforum for the global Malay and Muslim community.

Malacca Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Ali Rustam is currently DMDI president.

The authorities have reported the detection of more than 100 hotspots in satellite images in Riau.

The forest fires are reportedly spreading fast, with the affected area doubling in size in a matter of only three weeks.

This has brought about fears that prevailing southwest monsoon winds may carry the thick smoke across the Straits of Malacca, enveloping parts of Malaysia with another round of haze.

Rusli himself was not optimistic that another haze episode could be averted.

"We have had problems putting out the fires as the hotspots are deep in the forests, areas which are difficult to move into, but we are doing all we can."

Rusli said the Riau Government would act against plantation owners or individuals who deliberately set fires to clear their land.

"We have taken action in the past, including charging the culprits in court, some of whom were jailed or received hefty fines."

Forest Fires In Riau Threaten Haze In Malaysia

2006-03-14T11:07:00.000+08:00

By Mohd Nasir Yusoff

JAKARTA, March 11 (Bernama) -- Up to 20,000 hectares of forest in Sumatra's Riau province are on fire and there is fear the smoke may soon result in a haze in Malaysia, as had happened in the past.

Already, the Riau capital of Pekan Baru has been enveloped by thick smoke which, according to several residents, had been present over the last two weeks.

Local newspapers have reported the detection of more than 100 hotspots (signs of fires) on satellite images of an area along the border of Riau with northern Sumatra.

The forest fires are reportedly spreading fast, with the affected area doubling in size in a matter of only three weeks.

A spokesman of the Riau Department of Environment was quoted by the "Detiknews" news website as saying that the forest fires covering more than 20,000 hectares had enveloped several districts in the province with smoke though visibility was still at one kilometre.

"The most widespread fire has occurred in Dumai on the Strait of Melaka and our team on the field has found many hotspots in the forest that had been cleared and long abandoned," he said.

The spokesman said the cause of the forest fires, which also covered the districts of Bengkalis, Indragiri Hulu and Rokan Hilir, was being investigated.

Meanwhile, a spokesman of the Riau meteorological and geophysics authority said the province was experiencing a drought and the smoke from the forest fires could spread easily.

However, the prevailing Southwest Monsoon had yet to carry the thick smoke across the Strait of Melaka, he said.

Over the last few years, Malaysia had felt the effect of the forest fires in Riau when the monsoon carried the thick smoke across the strait and enveloped a part of Peninsular Malaysia with haze, forcing Malaysia to send its firemen to Riau to help put out the fires.

-- BERNAMA

Haze alert 2006!

2006-03-14T09:52:00.000+08:00

The Star Online

Tuesday March 14, 2006

KUALA LUMPUR: Gloomy hazy days may just come back to haunt us, with fires spreading rapidly through some 20,000 hectares of forest in Riau, Sumatra.

Pekan Baru, the capital of Riau, along with several other districts in the province have been shrouded in thick smoke over the last two weeks, and drought in the province is worsening the situation.

Barely a year ago, forest fires in the same area resulted in haze here that breached the 300-point hazardous mark on the Air Pollution Index.

The Riau province has been shrouded in thick smoke over the last two weeks.
According to Malaysian Meteorological Department Principal Assistant Director Wong Teck Kiong, the haze would “almost definitely” be back if the fires in Riau continued to burn throughout the coming inter-monsoon period and into the South-West monsoon season.

“At the moment, smoke from Riau is blowing away from us, as we are still to reach the end of the North-East monsoon season. But as we approach the inter-monsoon period, the winds may occasionally blow towards us,” said Wong.

“If the fires are still not out as we approach April and early May, then there will be haze,” he added.

Satellite images on the department’s website yesterday showed 21 hotspots in Sumatra, 52 in Borneo and 42 in the peninsula.

Wong said conditions during the South-West monsoon were more conducive for haze, being a dry season for Malaysia, as opposed to the North-East monsoon season which brought thunderstorms that helped to disperse haze.

According to the department’s Central Broadcast Office director Kang Thean Shong, hotspots were areas of 1sq km exceeding 40°C that were picked up by satellite imagery. Kang said forest fires generally did not occur naturally in this region, and human factor was likely to be the main cause.

In Putrajaya, SIM LEOI LEOI reported that the Malaysian environment authorities met their Indonesian counterpart two weeks ago to discuss measures to check forest fires.

Department of Environment director-general Datuk Rosnani Ibarahim said the Indonesians had promised to increase surveillance on areas prone to fires.

“The authorities have pulled in local residents to form volunteer squads to put out any fire burning within their villages. Previously, the Indonesian authorities had no such squads,” she said yesterday.

Rosnani said so far, the Indonesian authorities seemed to be coping well with the situation in Riau and had not requested for any technical expertise or aid.

“I believe the situation is still very much under control as the present wind direction is still prevalently that of east and north east over the next two days. We are not expecting transboundary haze soon but are monitoring the air quality very closely,” she said.

Haze threatens Malaysia travel business

2005-04-03T17:14:00.000+08:00

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (Reuters) -- The travel industry is expressing fears that the haze from Indonesian forest fires, which has driven away foreign travelers in the past, is posing a fresh threat to local businesses.

Malaysia sees its peak season for Arab tourists between now and September and tour operators said the recurrence of the acrid-smelling haze, after a brief respite last month, could hurt new bookings and arrivals.

Visibility in Kuala Lumpur was down to about five km (about three miles) on Friday as dust particles from forest fires in Indonesia combined with the dense humidity and local air pollution to create the stifling haze that residents have come to dread.

The fires are mainly due to illegal slash-and-burn cultivation on plantations on the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan (Borneo).

"I'm afraid if this is prolonged, and the air quality gets any worse, we could start seeing some very undesirable things happening to our business," said a local tour agent who handles mainly Arab and European travellers.

Tourism is Malaysia's second biggest foreign exchange earner. Middle Eastern tourists, who begin flocking in from July to escape the desert heat at home, are among the biggest spenders.

The cross-border pollution from Indonesia, an annual occurence for more than 10 years, has at times affected neighbouring Singapore and southern Thailand as well.

The haze hit tourism in Malaysia so badly in 1997 that the government has made the air pollution index a state secret since.

The haze drifted over in June, but dissipated after Jakarta stepped up enforcement against illegal forest clearing. But Indonesian officials said even then that the problem could last at least another month.

The Environment Department in Malaysia on Friday classified the air quality in the country as "moderate".

The department has various ratings for air, including "unhealthy", "very unhealthy" and "hazardous".

"Actually, the level of pollution in the air itself is not that much, although the visibility is bad because of the high humidity," Rosnani Ibrahim, director-general of environment, told Reuters.

Originally posted at: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/08/13/bt.malaysia.haze.reut/

Illegal logging: Kudos to Negeri Sembilan

2005-03-30T11:26:00.000+08:00

From: MalaysiaKini

Hamdan Ibrahim
Mar 29, 05 2:07pm

One has to give credit to the Negeri Sembilan menteri besar in reacting quickly to stop illegal logging in the state and at the same time suspending the authority of the state forestry department director with regards to logging activities.

Illegal logging in a forest reserve area can affect the quality of water of the rivers that run through it. This is a criminal act which is unpardonable.

This proactive attitude of the Negeri Sembilan menteri besar should be emulated by other state leaders to stop the destruction of our natural heritage. There untold damage to the environment with green lungs being removed and wildlife displaced form their natural heritage.

A silver lining of the Bukit Cahaya Seri Alam fiasco is that we are seeing several large projects - which only profit their greedy developers - being scaled down. Hopefully, this auger well for the remaining green lungs and that they will not become victims to unsustainable development without a care for nature.

Our mangrove forests, which can act as a barrier against tsunamis, have been systematically cut down in the name of development. It seems ironical for the government to now allocate funds to rehabilitate these areas when if they had been persevered, time-consuming rehabilitation would not have been necessary.

The federal government should take over authority on land matters from the state leaders to solve the problem of state land being given to selected cronies for logging and development. These activities are reducing our quality of living what with flash floods, heat waves and the haze.

One can only hope and pray that the Anti-Corruption Agency can do a good job in nabbing the culprits who have reaped ill-gotten gains from illegal logging in Negeri Sembilan. This will serve as a lesson to others to not to break the law.

Kudos to the Negeri Sembilan CEO who seems to be acting like a good leader in developing the state. If other state leaders emulate his style in tackling problems, it would certainly bring about big dividends in the coming polls.

Breaking the hazy cycle

2005-03-27T13:44:00.000+08:00

THE Selangor Fire and Rescue Department is still battling fires in the Raja Musa Forest Reserve since the first one broke out last month. Two more new fires have since been spotted in different locations, in the dry and drained peatlands near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. They can be quelled once and for all.

It’s become a perennial problem despite it being preventable, some experts tell SARAH SABARATNAM ONE would think that given the annual haze episodes since the early 1990s, someone would have by now found a solution for it.

Yet it seems we have learnt nothing from the hazy days of our recent past.

At most, we have improved on our methods and equipment to control the forest fires that cause the haze, and only after the flames had gone off in a rage.

But what about preventing them in the first place, apart from increasing surveillance and fining those who conduct open burning?

This unfortunately is really no solution, as the majority of haze-causing fires are actually burning peat, which, according to Che Asmah Ibrahim, air division director for the Department of Environment, is more complex to handle and requires special solutions.

Peat fires are hard to control and almost impossible to put out, says Faizal Parish, from the Global Environment Centre.

Slapping fines on some Ahmad, Ah Kau or Samy is not going to stop the cycle from repeating itself annually, and the Raja Musa Forest Reserve in Hulu Selangor is a good example.

According to Selangor Forestry director Nik Mohd Shah Nik Mustafa, virtually the same spot has been bursting into flames every year since 1997.

"We have come to believe that it is the most natural thing in the world, that the dry season is to blame.

On the contrary, peat fires are not caused by dry weather," says Faizal. They are due to two specific factors.

First is the drainage of peat land.

"In its natural state, peatland is like a huge lake with slowly decomposing organic matter in it. Because 90 per cent of peat is water, it will not burn as it is always wet," says Faizal.

"It will only burn if the water has been drained out to allow activities like logging, mining or agriculture."

(inset) Faizal: Dry weather is not to blame

The second cause of peat fires are development activities which take place in land adjacent to a peat swamp forest.

"The peat swamp forest may be within a forest reserve but if development comes right up to its boundary, problems may arise.

"In most of the past cases, the fires start in such adjacent areas and then spread into the forest. If the peat forest is dry due to draining, it will easily catch fire."

In the case of the Raja Musa Forest Reserve, the same spot catches fire every year and each time, the damage spreads a little bit more. This year 700ha went up in flames.

On closer inspection, one will find that there are canals running near the boundary of this fire-prone area.

"The canals were built by loggers when the area was being logged back in the 1980s and ’90s, says Nik Mohd.

Once the forest was gazetted as a reserve in 1990, no new canals were allowed to be built. However, more than 500km of old canals remain, which were not filled up or blocked by the loggers when they left.

This means water has continued to drain out of the peat, making parts of the swamp as dry as kindling certain times of the year.

After the first fire broke out there in 1997, lalang grew over the peat and since then these fields of tall grass simply become highly flammable in the dry season.

As there is no buffer zone around the forest reserve boundary and as there is no control over the impact from development in areas adjacent to the forest reserve, it is easy for a fire to spread from outside into the forest through dry patches of peat.

According to Nor Hisham Mohd, Selangor Fire and Rescue Department assistant operations director, this is a recurring problem.

In Raja Musa, there are various development activities on the boundaries of the forest reserve.

An old tin mine lies south east of the forest and its pit is lower than the level of peat in the forest.

According to the Forestry Department, this has resulted in water continuously being drained out of the forest reserve.

Then there are the illegal settlers on the east side of the forest reserve next to Ladang Hopeful, who have encroached into the reserve and built drains to dry out the area in which they have settled.

This means more water flowing out of the peat. The settlers also clear land through open burning.

In the dry season, the peat becomes drier still.

As the peat is very deep — up to 10 metres in some places, says Nik Mohd — the fire goes underground and is often very difficult to detect and put out.

The scenario in Raja Musa is replicated elsewhere in Selangor, and rest of the country.

Dr Salmah Zakaria, the Department of Irrigation and Drainage director for corporate development believes that any effort to prevent peat fires has to address these very obvious problems.

"And when you talk about preventive measures, the approach has to be a holistic one," she says.

"It has to look into the genesis of the peat and the reasons why the deposit, in its approximately 6,000 years of existence, only started to catch fire rather recently.

"We have to conclude, perhaps, that one of the reasons is it has to do with man’s interference in its ecosystem — which is naturally wet."

Salmah also notes that a high percentage of peat fire cases occur in areas which were burnt at least once before.

This is because the previously burnt areas were not rehabilitated, restored or managed to prevent them from becoming literally hotspots during the dry season.

Haze hangs over Singapore after bush fires

2005-03-25T12:43:00.000+08:00

From : http://www.iol.co.za/

Singapore - A layer of smoke descended over Singapore on Thursday, blown from Southeast Asia's pockets of raging bush fires and causing the island's air quality to approach unhealthy levels, the government said.

The pollutant standards index (PSI) hit a high of 95 on Thursday, almost in the unhealthy range, the National Environment Agency said on its website. It averaged 61 on Thursday, the highest daily average this year.

"The prevailing winds are blowing some smoke haze from hot spots from peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra," the agency said, referring to the Indonesian island of Sumatra and adding that Singapore's bush fires also contributed to the hazy skies.

Singapore was hit by its worst dry spell in 29 years last month, sparking rare bush fires in the densely populated Southeast Asian island just 140km north of the equator. February was the driest month since 1976.

"The haziness is expected to persist from time to time over the next few days as the wind conditions are light and not able to fully disperse the smoke haze particles," the agency said.

But the air quality was not expected to reach an unhealthy range as defined by a PSI reading of more than 100, it said.

2005-03-24T14:47:00.000+08:00

http://science.news.designerz.com/
24 March 2005

Forest fires in Malaysia Malaysia enveloped the capital in a smoky haze as visibility at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport dropped to two kilometres (1.24 miles), officials said.

Some 160 firemen were working to control peat fires which have been raging since earlier this month, covering 57 hectares (140.8 acres) in central Selangor state which surrounds the capital, a district Fire and Rescue Department spokesman told AFP.

Fires in the wake of prolonged hot, dry weather have also caused pollution and reduced visibility in several other states, officials said.

Visibility was down to three kilometres in southern Malacca state, the Meteorological Service Department's official website said.

Alor Setar, the capital of northern Kedah state, recorded visibility of just 0.3 kilometres earlier on Wednesday before it improved to more than 10 kilometres.

The air quality deteriorated to "unhealthy" in four areas -- Bukit Rambai located in southern Malacca state, Seremban and Nilai in Negeri Sembilan state, and in Shah Alam, Selangor, according to a statement from the Department of Environment.

Less hazy in Klang Valley Unhealthy air recorded in four areas

2005-03-24T09:28:00.000+08:00

The Star
24 March 2005

PETALING JAYA: Rain over the Klang Valley has helped to ease the hazy condition here while some areas in the country continued to have unhealthy air.

The Department of Environment (DOE) said four areas – Seremban and Nilai (in Negri Sembilan), Bukit Rambai (Malacca) and Shah Alam (Selangor) – recorded unhealthy air.

Twenty-five other areas recorded moderate air quality, while visibility in the Klang Valley had improved since Tuesday afternoon – approaching 10km by 11am.

Twenty-two areas in the east coast of the peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak recorded good air conditions.

DOE director-general Rosnani Ibarahim said an increase in moisture content and dust particles would reduce visibility.

The DOE, she said, would act against any party caught for open burning, adding that it was monitoring for signs of such activities.

She warned that offenders are liable to be fined up to RM500,000 or jailed up to five years or both upon conviction.

The maximum fine of RM2,000 could also be imposed for each offence, she said, adding that the department had fined 67 culprits to date.

In Penang, a state DOE spokesman said the air quality yesterday morning at Sungai Dua was good while the quality at Prai and Seberang Jaya was moderate.

He said no open burning was detected, adding that the moderate air quality on the mainland was because of localised factors such as smoke emissions from vehicles and factories.

The inter-monsoon season at the end of this month or early next month is expected to bring rain and a cool respite from the prolonged drought, said a state meteorological services spokesman.

He said the inter-monsoon period would bring rain clouds, showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon.

“The north-east monsoon is now coming to an end, which will be followed by the inter-monsoon from April to May.”

The importance of weather reports

2005-03-23T17:15:00.001+08:00

The Star
23 March 2005

By MICHAEL CHEANG

The weather affects us constantly and we think about it every day. �Many of our daily activities are influenced by changes in the weather,� says Chow Kok Kee, the director-general of the Malaysian Meteorological Service (MMS). �What you decide to do, what you should wear, are all weather-related. If it is a rainy day or the air quality is poor, then you would have to reschedule your outdoor activities. When you plan for vacations, you�d take the weather into consideration. You would not want to go to Pulau Redang during the North-East monsoon!�

Even the livelihood of some people is affected by the weather. �We often get phone calls for the weather forecast from people who work in the pasar malam who want to know whether they should set up stall. The ice-cream seller�s business will also be affected by the weather,� says Chow.

�During the monsoon season, the fishermen on the East Coast will not be able to go out to sea, so the price of fish will go up as a result of diminished supply. Vegetable prices will also go up during the rainy season because during such times, vegetable production drops.�

Chow Kok Kee: �Weather has no boundaries. It is an interaction of Earth�s entire atmosphere, which always tries to reach a stable and balanced state.�
Malaysians may not be as weather conscious as people in other countries because we live in a tropical country that does not experience drastic fluctuations in weather.

However, in countries like Australia where the temperature can change more than 10 degrees within a single day, information on the weather becomes more important to the man in the street.

In temperate countries like the United States, information on the weather is so crucial that there is a 24-hour weather channel which offers nothing but weather reports. If a snowstorm is forecast, the schools are told to close for the day and take appropriate measures to prepare for the storm.

While someone living in Kuala Lumpur may scoff at the weather report, it is certainly no joke to people in the East Coast states who have to brave the heavy rains and floods that the North-East Monsoon brings every year.

�People in Kelantan and Terengganu have to prepare for the worst during the monsoon season,� says Chow.

�During this period, it is our job to warn the people about the weather conditions. We usually warn them two or three days ahead, so that the agencies responsible for disaster management can get ready to mobilise their vehicles and relief centres.�

The MMS is also responsible for setting up the tsunami early warning system, which will be up and running by the end of the year.

Besides serving the public, the MMS also services two sectors in which the weather plays a crucial role: the aviation and shipping industries.

�An aircraft taking off from KL to Hong Kong will need to know the safest route there. Thus, we provide them with the weather and wind patterns so they can plan their course accordingly,� says Chow. �For instance, if there is a typhoon in the region, then they may have to divert course. Shipping and oil exploration are also affected by the weather in a similar way.� The MMS has several avenues of conveying weather information to the public. Newspapers carry daily weather forecasts, as do the radio and TV stations. Certain regional radio stations also carry very specific weather reports on local weather. Besides the media, the public can also call up the MMS Central Forecasting Office (CFO) in Petaling Jaya to get a weather forecast.

The CFO is manned 24 hours a day, and has at least four people working at any given time. They get an average of 10-20 calls a day from people wanting to know about the weather.

�On busy days such as F1 race days, the phone would be ringing non-stop!� says CFO principal assistant director Wong Teck Kiong. �We can usually predict with reasonable confidence the weather for the next five days. Anything more than that is a lot less accurate.�

Weather without borders

Currently, weather reports issued by the MMS is only about 75% accurate.

�We cannot possibly provide a 100% accurate forecast. It is difficult to predict the weather in the tropics due to the presence of individual clouds. Many a time, we have rain over certain areas but not a single cloud in another place,� says Chow.

�For instance, it may be raining in Ampang but when one drives over to Petaling Jaya, there may not be rain. So for people in Ampang, the forecast would be correct, but not for those elsewhere.�

Whether we like it or not, our daily activities are influenced by the weather.
�We can forecast that a thunderstorm will occur at a certain time, but we are not able to pinpoint exactly where it is going to be.�

At present, there are 34 meteorological stations in Malaysia monitoring the weather around the clock. However, the information gathered from these stations is not enough to come up with an accurate forecast, because the weather is something that affects the entire world.

What happens in the Philippines will affect Malaysian weather as well. For instance, if a typhoon hits the Philippines, it could probably result in dry weather in some parts of Malaysia or bad weather in Sabah. Similarly, anything that happens with the climate in the tropics will affect the temperate zone, and vice versa.

�Weather has no boundaries. It is an interaction of Earth�s entire atmosphere, which always tries to reach a stable and balanced state,� says Chow. �Besides the information from our own stations, we need to have an exchange of weather information with other countries as well.�

For that, there is an international effort and global network that exchanges weather information throughout the world, much of it done through the World Meteorological Organisation.

�Weather reports are perishable products. The weather now may be fair, but if a thunderstorm comes along in 20 minutes� time, the report we have now will be useless!� says Chow. �That is why you need to have a very fast exchange of information among all the countries.�

The MMS also makes use of satellites as an observation tool to see the whole of South-East Asia up to Australia on an hourly basis. It currently obtains information from the satellites of countries like Japan, China and the United States.

In fact, the satellite antennae in the MMS courtyard are a perfect example of how weather technology has progressed over the years. Just beside the main entrance is a satellite antenna that harks back to the early 1970s. Looking more like a water-heating rod than an antenna, it is a polar-satellite antenna that received signals from the Noah polar-orbiting satellites back then. To receive signals with this antenna, the meteorologist had to manually manoeuvre the satellite to track the orbiting satellites whenever it passed over this region.

Today, the MMS relies on three different antennae for information. The largest one, also located in the MMS courtyard, is a geo-satellite that receives signals from the American GOES-9 satellite, while another geo-satellite atop the old MMS building receives signals from the Japanese MT-SAT satellite.

Unlike polar-satellites which orbit the Earth continuously, making passes over certain areas at certain periods, geo-satellites stay fixed in a certain spot by orbiting the Earth at the same speed at which the planet revolves. Thus, geo-satellites can give continuous coverage on the weather and wind patterns of a certain area throughout the day, and the information gathered from these satellites is vital to the meteorologist�s work.

That doesn�t mean polar-satellites are obsolete though. The MMS still has a polar-satellite antenna atop its new building which it uses to gather specific information about the weather, such as haze-affected areas, hot spots, and sea surface temperatures. With the information gathered from all these different sources, the weather report can now be generated. Most of the monitoring and issuing of weather forecasts is done at the CFO.

�We use a system called Numerical Weather Prediction, whereby after gathering all the information from everywhere, we then feed it into a computer model which will generate a weather prediction for the next few days,� explains Wong.

�Based on what is going on today, the computer model will generate a product which forecasts the weather for the next few days,� Chow adds.

�However, for the computer to generate this product, we need input, and this input comes from the whole world. Therefore, you could say that weather truly has no boundaries.�

Members of the public can obtain weather reports around the clock by calling the Malaysian Meteorological Service (03-79679119), or checking out their website at http://www.kjc.gov.my.

Peat fires causing hazy conditions in Klang Valley

2005-03-23T17:15:00.000+08:00

The Star
23 March 2005

PETALING JAYA: Hazy conditions due to the recurrence of peat fires have caused visibility and air quality to deteriorate in the Klang Valley.

Deputy Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk S. Sothinathan said unhealthy air quality levels were recorded in certain parts of the Klang Valley yesterday.

�This is because there are a lot of peat fires,� he said, adding that the areas included the Raja Muda Musa forest reserve, Klang and areas near the KL International Airport.

Other parts of the country, he added, showed moderate and good air quality levels.

He also said visibility had decreased because of moisture in the air.

�It rained in certain parts of the Klang Valley. We hope the rain will do some good,� he added.

He also advised the public to call the Department of Environment hotline at 03-8889 1972 to report any open burning.

A daily bulletin posted by the Meteorological Services Department on its website reported haze at 29 of its 34 stations as of 2pm.

Visibility at 7pm in Subang was 2km, Petaling Jaya (4km), Sepang (2.5km), Cameron Highlands (6km) and Muadzam Shah (7km).

Visibility in Butterworth was 0.6km at 5pm but improved to more than 10km by 7pm.

The maximum temperature for Kuala Lumpur and here yesterday was at 34�C and is predicted to be the same today.

DOE Air Division director Che Asmah Ibrahim said satellite images detected eight hotspots throughout the country and investigations into open burning activities in the Klang Valley were on-going.

She said the hotspots were in Johor (4), Kedah (1), Perak (1) and Pahang (2).

In Shah Alam, firemen were working round-the-clock to put out fires in Parit 13, Sungai Panjang in Sabak Bernam, the Raja Muda Musa forest reserve in Batang Berjuntai, the Timah Langat area on the way to KLIA and in Jalan Kebun.

Selangor Fire and Rescue Department assistant operations director Nor Hisham Mohd said that while the local fires �might contribute to the severity of the hazy condition, they were not the primary reason�.

Conserving the mangroves, Selangor mulls a forest reserve plan

2005-03-22T08:43:00.000+08:00

The Star
22 March 2005

PETALING JAYA: The Selangor Forestry Department will be submitting a proposal soon to the state council to convert the mangrove forest in Pulau Ketam and the surrounding area into a forest reserve, said its director Nik Mohd Shah Nik Mustafa.

“It’s curently state land but we want it to become a forest reserve so that it can be preserved and rehabilitated,” he said.

He added that this was also in line with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s call for the preservation of mangrove swamps following the tsunami disaster in December.

On claims by villagers that there was illegal logging in the area, Nik Mohd Shah did not discount the possibility of small-time illegal loggers operating there.

“We have to get the proposal out first before deciding on whether to stop the issuance of licences.

“There will be tighter control once it becomes a forest reserve as loggers have to follow forest reserve rules and regulations, which includes buffer zones,” he said, adding that there were currently eight active logging licences for the Pulau Ketam area.

Total mangrove swamp area for all the islands is about 4,085ha – Pulau Ketam (2,900ha), Pulau Tengah (790ha), Pulau Klang (270ha), Pulau Che Mat Zin (40ha) and Pulau Rusa (85ha).

The eight active logging licences for Pulau Ketam and the surrounding area allow 1,093ha to be logged.

Nik Mohd Shah said they were working with university experts to map out a new forest management plan for the state, especially to better manage mangrove forests.

“They are expected to start working on the plan next month. We hope to complete it by the end of this year and implement it by next year once it is approved,” he added.

Malaysian Nature Society executive director Dr Loh Chi Leong said it was important to preserve the multi-functional mangrove forests, which was often misconstrued as being smelly and of “no use”.

He added that destroying mangrove forests would significantly reduce the population of marine life such as prawns and mud crabs and would affect the livelihood of mangrove fishermen.

“Mangroves also protect coastlines from erosion and serve as barriers for salt-water intrusion, which can affect agriculture.

“Research by experts showed that it will cost US$9,990 (RM37,962) per hectare per year to use technology to replace the naturally available mangroves.

“For example, if you cut the trees down, you have to spend money to construct a seawall to prevent salt water intrusion,” he said.

Residents:Forests on three islands being overlogged

2005-03-22T08:40:00.000+08:00

The Start
22 March 2005

BY DEVID RAJAH AND FLORENCE A. SAMY

PORT KLANG: The mangrove forests in Pulau Ketam, Pulau Tengah and Pulau Klang – all located off here – are fast depleting due to over-logging.

Villagers, who used to fell the trees for firewood,claimed that about 80% of mature mangrove trees had been felled in the cluster of islands.

A check by The Star found some 30 cleared patches in Pulau Tengah in a short span of a 20-minute boat ride along the river at the island.

There was also a never-ending trail of stumps of felled mangrove trees, some measuring only 7.6cm in diameter. Loggers are only allowed to cut down mangrove trees with diameters of 15cm and above.

At one of the cleared spots, illegal loggers had neatly piled up about 30 mangrove logs, each measuring about 8cm in diameter.

During a 45-minute boat ride along Pulau Ketam, some 50 cleared patches were discovered.

The Star also found a resting area built inside the mangrove swamp.

Villagers from Pulau Ketam claimed even the young trees were not spared by illegal loggers.

They said this was evident from the absence of mature trees away from the shoreline and the significant drop in the catch of mud crabs, prawns and fish.

“We believe there is illegal logging on all three islands and this is making matters worse.

We suspect foreign illegal workers have been cutting down the remaining trees to make some extra money.

“They cart away the logs in barges under the cover of darkness, especially during high tide,” claimed Ah Ming, 45, a fisherman from Pulau Ketam.

He added that the uncontrolled felling of trees was affecting the fishermen's livelihood.

“In the past five years, I could hardly find ikan sembilang (striped sea catfish) and yellow grouper.

“Ten years ago, I could catch up to 20kg of mud crabs and prawns in a day along the mangrove swamp but today I consider myself lucky if I get 5kg of crabs,” he added.

Others said only young mangrove trees were left in the forest and this had apparently created an imbalance in the ecosystem.

“The feeding and breeding grounds of many species of marine life are affected by this economic activity,” said T.T. Heng, 49, a resident here.

He said even the young trees measuring seven to 10cm in diameter were being felled.

“Boats carrying the loggers will drop them off in the mangrove forest areas during the day and sometimes they will spend a week cutting down the trees before moving to other areas,” said another fisherman, who declined to be named.

Pulau Ketam village head Chia Mong Chun, 49, urged the state Forestry Department to stop issuing logging permits to prevent further depletion of the mangrove forests.

“Many will not notice the missing trees from the shoreline as the loggers do not log trees close to the shore. But if you go just one to two metres inland, you will see that the mature trees are all gone.

“If you look deeper into the forest, you can only see young trees,” he said, adding that the mangrove forest in Pulau Ketam and the neighbouring islands were supposed to be protected under the wetlands conservation programme.

Chia said the forest was still lush and the rivers and waters were teeming with fish, crabs and prawns 10 years ago.

“Today restaurant owners here are importing fish and crabs,” said Chia, who hoped the authorities would heed Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s call to protect mangrove swamps along coastal areas. Related Stories:

Open burning in Kundasang

2005-03-17T13:21:00.000+08:00

DAILY EXPRESS NEWS
Open burning in Kundasang
15 March, 2005

Kota Kinabalu: A massive fire probably started by farmers preparing land for planting burnt out of control in Kampung Tomis, a foothill village of Mt Kinabalu, Sunday.

It sent a huge plume of smoke rising high to join the clouds. Some of the big trees in a nearby forest also caught fire.

Such widespread forest clearing and subsequent subjection of tender soil to harsh and severe fiery treatment during the height of drought every year is partly blamed for turning the supposedly temperate Kundasang into another hot tropic.

"Kundasang used to look like Switzerland 20 years ago but now not only the scenic beauty has been destroyed, I have to install air-conditioners in my house," said a senior KPD officer.

Smoke from such burning often enveloped Mt Kinabalu in haze in recent years and marred the view of Sabah's most famous nature tourism icon. Over the past week, a persistent ring of smoke was seen encircling the mountain.

Some very attractive species of plants found only on the higher slopes of the mountain are indicators of air purity and these can only survive in 100pc unpolluted air.

As such, the regular and widespread slash and burn practice which may contaminate the upper levels of air can potentially spell doom to these extremely sensitive plants.

Other salient objections to the outright burning include sobering long term ecological implication.

"You already have a weed version of the acacia present in Sabah. Because this weed is spreading so fast, over time, it will change the terrestrial ecosystem of Sabah to something else," warned Chee, a former forester from Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM).

"I don't think you can get rid of it now but you must at least do something to minimise it," he said. "One way is to stop the open burning of former forest covers."

The Australian weed, spread by birds which eat their seeds, germinate quick once they are exposed to fire.

Organic farmer Low Siew Wah said one reason farmers burn is they are after some quick carbon to help release nutrients such as potassium and phosphorus.

But what little benefits to the farmers, water sources, trees, air quality are destroyed, Low contends.

"Oxygen is a natural coolant and when there are less trees, there is probably less oxygen while burning just keeps pumping more heat generating carbon dioxide into the air, which has made Kundasang hotter," he opined.

Friendly soil microbes and useful animals for biological controls ranging from predatory insects to birds disappear, leaving farmers to rely heavily on chemical fertilisers and pesticides to artificially boost and protect crops, he said.

Even if quick carbon is sought, there are ways to minimise burning by using a "smoking" method that uses a limited corner or large hole in the farm, Low said.

"Of course that takes more work but anything good for everybody requires care, time and effort," he said

Low, who started organic farming at various places at the foothills of Mt Kinabalu in 1988, said the weather in the region was very stable in the past but this stability was lost since several years ago.

"In the past, day time was always cool, even up to mid day but now even by 9am, you begin to feel the burning heat," Low said, based on his personal experience.

Warm clothes were an imperative then even at noon. "Now, even night time you may need to take off your clothes because it's so warm" he said, referring to his recent experience in Bundu Tuhan.

"Water wise, it's either too much during the rainy season or too little during the dry season now," he said.

In contrast, he added: "Rainy season in the past means maybe two showers per week and sunny thereafter but now, once it rains, it can rain cats and dogs for a whole week, no sun and low clouds therefore stunting vegetable growth."

Meanwhile, the Department of Environment (DOE) here said they were not aware of Sunday's large open burning at Kg Tomis as nobody reported it to them.

Under the Environmental Quality Act 1974, open burning is an offence and the offending farmer or farmers risks being charged in court. In the case of large plantations and industries, those found guilty are liable to a maximum fine of RM500,000 or a five-year jail.

For open burning in housing estates, the first offence is liable to RM2,000 fine while court action can be instituted against those for a second offence.

The DOE officer said farmers have also been fined RM2,000 for open burning but since such fines had proved to be an insufficient deterrent, the department is considering heavier penalties.

Generally, however, Sabah saw less haze during the current drought and this may reflect that threat of hefty penalties may have worked.

DOE offices on alert as air quality worsens

2005-03-12T12:45:00.000+08:00

The Star
Saturday March 12, 2005
DOE offices on alert as air quality worsens
BY FLORENCE A. SAMY

PETALING JAYA: All Department of Environment offices have been ordered to strictly enforce environment laws immediately following the deterioration of air quality around the country in the past 24 hours due to open burning.

Deputy Environment and Natural Resources Minister Datuk S. Sothinathan said the orders were issued the moment the API reached moderate level in line with a Cabinet decision made two weeks ago when air quality was hovering around the unhealthy level.

This is the first time the action plan was activated.

“The bush and forest fires in certain states are the major contributing factors to the haze, but we have also detected several open burnings.

“We will see how the situation is in a day or two as yesterday was a bit hazy, mostly due to smoke and air moisture because it rained in certain areas,” he said.

He said DOE officers were monitoring and assessing the situation very closely before deciding on whether to ban open burning.

The Klang Valley, Perak, Malacca, Johor, Kedah and Terangganu were among 31 locations that recorded moderate air quality levels yesterday. Another 20 locations had healthy air quality.

Meteorological Services Department reported that visibility levels in Petaling Jaya and Sepang dipped to 7km and 8km respectively yesterday because of the haze while others mostly registered normal levels of above 10km.

The slight haze was caused by smoke, embers and fires raging across parts of the country.

Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves?

2005-03-11T10:50:00.000+08:00

from: http://www.jeffooi.com

The NST (frontpage, Mar 5) gave us the first glimpse of who the 36 developers involved in the Bukit Cahaya controversy are.

Look at this picture, the face of the 'chinaman' appears one too many in just one occasion.

We wonder if the practice of Ali Baba - where the Ali gets the land and sells it to Baba to pocket instant profit - is still thriving in this country?

Look at the names of the housing developers announced in the Press, among the 24 companies which sent representatives to meet MB Dr Khir Toyo were:

Tengku Shahrudin Sdn Bhd, led by CEO Dr Lau Ban Tin

Bandar Subang Sdn Bhd of the Farlim Group, led by MD Mohd Iqbal Rawther

Central Challenger Sdn Bhd, led by someone who only wanted to be identified as Lim

Lebar Daun Development Sdn Bhd, whose representative declined to be identified

Indi Makmur Sdn Bhd, led by former Agriculture minister Effendi Norwawi

It appears that only Tengku Shahrudin Sdn Bhd's Lau was among the rare few who fielded questions from the Press. But his answer was vague if you have asked for transparency. Quote:

Asked if any royalty was linked to the company, he said this was a question that only the shareholders could ask.

If you remember well, Utusan Malaysia has, in its Mar 3 frontpage editorial, asked this key question of land-title owners who are the direct beneficiaries of land alienation awarded by the Selangor state government:

Perlu juga diketahui sama ada mereka pemilik asal atau mereka membelinya daripada orang lain yang mendapatnya.
Untuk berlaku adil kepada Dr. Khir Toyo, perlu juga dimaklumkan apa yang diberikan kepada siapa semasa siapa menjadi Menteri Besar. Sekali lagi, jika kita betul-betul hendak berpegang kepada ketelusan, tiada sebab untuk menyembunyikan fakta-fakta itu.

Translation:

We also need to know whether they are original (land title) holder, or they had bought over from other people who got it.
To be fair to Dr Khir Toyo, it is necessary to announce who was given what during the time which particular person was the menteri besar. Again, if we hold fast to transparency, there is no reason to hide these facts.

As to which menteri besar has alienated the 1,200ha area outside Bukit Cahaya to so many parties, Khir Toyo gave a clue in yesterday's interview with The NST, quote:

I do not know because the decision was made by the previous State Government. It must have had a good reason at that time, when the approval was given between 1993 and 1999, if I am not mistaken.
The State Executive Council and the District Officer must have a good reason. The technical departments must also have good reasons to support the applications. A Menteri Besar cannot decide that a piece of land be given to A. If that's the way then "seronoklah jadi MB".

To complete Khir Toyo's riddle, I need Screenshots readers to feedback in this blog information about who reigned as Selangor MB between 1993 through 1999.

Apparently, over the weekend, Khir Toyo has gone on the TV and Press circuits to put the blame on the inefficiency of the local government, while the local government, particularly MBSA, blames it on the housing developers. Such is the chain of command when it comes to pointing fingers.

NST's feature: Selangor's ecology a lost cause? may help put things in perspective pertaining to the authoritative power to alienate land to housing developers, and have control over them:

But local councils have no power to halt the development once the land is alienated and transferred. Regardless what concerns the councils and other State agencies may have, the State Government has the final say.
Approval from the local council for clearing of land is a mere formality, according to the officials.

"When they send in an application (to clear the land), how can we say no?

"The State authority has already approved the alienation of land and the new land owners have already paid a premium for the land to the State," said a senior official.

Under the National Land Code, State Governments decide which land is to be alienated and which reserved, as well as what conditions to impose.

Applications for land are submitted to district land offices, and then studied by the district's Land Committee which is chaired by the District Officer.

Applications and the district committee's recommendations are then put before the State Executive Council, which in Selangor is chaired by the Menteri Besar, for approval.

Aside from alienating the land, State Governments are responsible for planning development and land use, according to the Town and Country Planning Act 1976.

Taking the National Lade Code and the governance structure over land matters into consideration, it seems that Malaysian Nature Society president Dr Salleh Mohd Nor is the only one who hits the nail on its head:

"It is the State Exco and the MB who are to blame - they have the final say.
"They must practice good governance and find good approaches for development."

As it turns out, local government has now become the convenient punching-bag for bad governance, as evidenced in The NST editorial on Sunday:

Selangor became the first State Government to give pride of place to "sustainable development" and went further than any other in its stated commitment to protect what is left of its depleting natural resources. Today, that commitment looks as barren as the denuded land around the Bukit Cahaya Seri Alam Agriculture Park.
The U10 township development was an exercise in rule-breaking so wanton that it ought to do more than undermine the Selangor Government's environmental standing. [...]

There are also tell-tale signs that other municipalities may be just as footloose with the few gazetted zones that remain in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. What is worse, these encroachments are not being made in the name of the poor or even to relieve population pressure. Bungalows for the rich were to be built on some parcels at U10, which nailed the accusation that the environment was being destroyed for pure profit. [...]

With the events of the last week, however, the country's green spaces may be less threatened by greedy developers than the reluctance or inability of local government to play by its own rules.

Taking the cue from facts and perspectives above - where the local government is made both a rubberstamp and scapegoat - it's best that we revive the election of the local government.

At the very least, if Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves were to roam town, the taxpayers have the right to vote them out once every five years.

For now, please vote your say in Screenshots SMS Poll. We need the numbers to tell the Government not to gentle-slap on the wrist of the wrong-doers but to send out a strong signal, for the sake of governance and accountability.

Semuanya OK? Pak Lah has more to say

2005-03-11T10:48:00.001+08:00

from http://www.jeffooi.com

This is the latest from PM Abdullah Badawi, via Bernama today:

Asked on the Bukit Cahaya Seri Alam Agriculture Park controversy, the PM says he will see whether his instructions issued to Selangor Menteri Besar Dr Khir Toyo for the matter to be resolved immediately are carried out.
On whether the Anti Corruption Agency (ACA) should investigate the matter, Abdullah said: "It's up to the ACA to conduct investigations."

Meanwhile, Dr Khir Toyo blames the lack of enforcement by the Majlis Bandaraya Shah Alam (MBSA) and the heads of the relevant departments for the developers' blatant action to carry out earthwork on the land near the park illegally.

He says, "it should be a bitter experience to local authorities and they must be careful when approving projects... they should go down to the ground instead of staying in the office... they must take into account the environment."

Seven Developers To Be Charged Next Week

2005-03-11T10:48:00.000+08:00

Bernama.com
Malaysian National News Agency

Seven Developers To Be Charged Next Week
General
March 04, 2005 19:00 PM
SHAH ALAM, March 4 (Bernama) -- Seven companies involved in the development of projects near the Bukit Cahaya Seri Alam agriculture park here will be charged in court next week for carrying out earthworks illegally.

Selangor Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Mohamad Khir Toyo said they would be charged under the Road, Drainage and Building 133 Act which carries a fine of up to RM50,000 or jail of up to five years.

"Legal papers are ready and they will be prosecuted," he told reporters after co-ordinating a meeting between the Shah Alam City Council (MBSA) and the companies which developed the land near the agriculture park here Friday.

He said two of the companies which were developing the land bordering the park would face action under the MBSA Earthwork by-laws 1990 for not fulfilling the specifications, such as not providing retention ponds and a satisfactory drainage system.

If convicted, each of the developers is liable to a fine of up to RM2,000.

Dr Khir said six other developers were being considered for legal actions, pending reports from the Kumpulan Ikram Sdn Berhad, a body which conducted researches on civil works, and the Mineral and Geoscience Department.

Actions to be meted out on these developers will come under the MBSA's jurisdiction.

Dr Khir made it clear that no developers which breached the law would be let free.

He, however, refused to disclose the names of the developers involved.

He had said earlier that he had no interest in the 35 companies which were involved in the development of the areas around the agriculture park.

He blamed the lack of enforcement by the MBSA and the heads of the relevant departments for the developers' blatant action to carry out earthwork on the land near the park illegally.

He said 15 of the 35 developers had started the earthworks.

Meanwhile, one of the developers, Tengku Shahruddin Sdn Bhd, claimed the company had obtained the approval for earthwork from the MBSA last year and had followed the procedures.

Its chief executive officer Tan Sri Dr Lau Ban Tin said that the earthworks for its Bukit Tengku Bungalows project had almost completed.

Under its project, 160 units of bungalows are scheduled to be constructed on a 24-hectare site.

Lau said the MBSA had ordered his company to build additional retention ponds to prevent flooding.

"We are going to do so immediately," he told reporters after attending the meeting.

Asked whether it was fair for the government to blame the developers for the massive development surrounding the park, he said he believed the government had no intention to blame the developers, but was cautious to ensure that development would not jeopardise the ecology of the park.

-- BERNAMA

Heart broken news

2004-09-30T09:14:00.000+08:00

Indonesia is estimated to be losing nearly two million hectares million acres) of forest annually -- an area half the size of Switzerland -- up from one million hectares in the 1980s. Forest cover fell from 162 million hectares in 1950 to only 98 million hectares in 2000.

Despite their evidence, Indonesia's environmental groups say they are powerless to stop one of the world's largest expanses of forests after Brazil from vanishing because of the level of corruption.

News from Terra Daily