Politics gets in the way of safety

Earlier this year, German, Japanese and EU forestry experts working with the Indonesian government produced a public information film aimed at reducing the danger of forest fire. The film was to have been screened on all Indonesia's television stations, but, weeks after completion, it has still not been shown.

The problem was the opening sequence, which begins with the following words, over scenes of the thick smoke which hung over South-east Asia in 1997, causing fatal boating accidents, and deaths from asthma: "Last year, hundreds of people died because of haze..."

"The Ministry of Forestry was unhappy about it," says a European participant in the project. "They didn't like to admit how bad it was."

Quite apart from their social and ecological ramifications, the fires rekindling themselves in Indonesian Borneo have from the beginning been a knotty political problem. Their causes are partly natural (the drought which has affected the entire region), and partly economic (the scramble for land by forestry, mining and plantation companies). But their duration and effects have been made worse by the touchiness, corruption and inflexibility of the government of President Suharto.

Failure to face the facts is only one part of the problem, which is politely set out in a paper by Ludwig Schindler, leader of the German-run Integrated Forest Fire Management project in East Kalimantan. "The Ministry of Forestry lacks sufficient authority and infrastructure to respond effectively in the event of a forest fire," he wrote. "Linkages to the regions, to other government ministries and to the private sector are weak ... Fire is only a symptom."

When the fires began last year, the ministers for environment and forestry responded promptly, naming big timber and plantation companies as the culprits. President Suharto himself reiterated a ban on forest burning, and 176 companies were named as violators. But according to witnesses in East Kalimantan province, several of these same companies are burning again this year, without any obvious show of concern on the part of the authorities.

So far the fires have had little effect on Java, the island where 60 per cent of Indonesians and all the influential ones, live. In fact, last year's fires might have been almost ignored if their smoke had not drifted over to Singapore and Malaysia. It was the anger and diplomatic pressure of these countries which forced Indonesia to address the problem, however ineffectively, and which may yet do again.

- Richard Lloyd Parry, Samarinda