INDONESIA FIRES REVISITING, AGAIN (Yet Again!)
Fires Again, Again, Again, …
Once again the media is full of smoke, children wearing masks, suffering orang-utans, burnt land, people on firefighting trucks and planes and calls for action. The firefighting, trucks and planes, have limitations on their effectiveness (or indeed usefulness) in responding to fires, particularly peat fires. Fighting these fires is not the solution to the problem, it is a gesture at the symptom of smoke blanketing the region from fires in Indonesia.
Episodes of fire and drought are not new in Indonesia, with major events occurring in 1982/83, which was the first Indonesian dry season in which fires created an international profile, then 1987, 1991, 1997/98 and into the 2000s. In 2015 the fires are back again. The El Nino was forecast and recognised early as being potentially among the strongest on record. There is no basis for being surprised. There is no reason for the same firefighting responses to be recycled to the little or no effect they have had over the 32 years since 1983.
