Bioclime - Biodiversity and Climate Change

Muhammadiyah calls for jihad against forest fires

The central executive board of Indonesia’s second-largest Muslim organization Muhammadiyah has called for a ‘constitutional jihad’ consisting of the annulment of laws and government regulations that have allowed land and forest fires to rage across large tracts of land.

“We have had a meeting with provincial executive boards and agreed to conduct the constitutional jihad,” Rahmawati Husein of Muhammadiyah Disaster Management Center told a discussion forum on the haze held in Yogyakarta on Tuesday.

“Constitutional jihad”, she said, was mandatory because many laws and regulations had been misappropriated.
Read full article: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/11/04/muhammadiyah-calls-jihad-against-forest-fires.html

As haze clears, govt finally acts

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo ordered on Wednesday all relevant government institutions to start working on preventive measures that could prevent the annual forest and peatland fires, with only eight months left before the next dry season starts.

Jokowi told a limited Cabinet meeting that now was the perfect time to start focusing on preventive efforts given that the number of hot spots had declined from more than 1,000 to around 53 in Sumatra and 124 in Kalimantan.

Indonesia Now Looks at Land-Burning Laws in Effort to Halt Haze

Jakarta. Indonesia is reviewing laws that allow farmers to burn up to two hectares (five acres), forestry officials said, the latest in so-far unsuccessful efforts to halt fires that have sent choking smoke across much of Southeast Asia.

Indonesia is also considering declaring a national emergency over the fires, which this week caused President Joko Widodo to cut short an official trip to the United States and pushed the country’s greenhouse gas emissions above the daily average from all economic activity in the U.S.

Two Million Hectares of Indonesian Forests Lost to Fires Since June

Jakarta. More than two million hectares of forest area have been reduced to ashes in the past five months in Indonesia, according to the data published by the National Space and Aviation Agency (Lapan).

The agency said on Friday that based on satellite data collected from June 21 until Oct. 20, an estimated 2,089,911 hectares were gone.

The number is likely to grow, as a large number of forests -- as well as peat lands -- are still fire, causing the ongoing haze crisis, especially in Kalimantan and Sumatra.

Haze: Over 500,000 Indonesians Suffer Acute Respiratory Infection

Jakarta. More than 500,000 Indonesians are suffering from acute respiratory infection after having been exposed to fire-induced haze for months, the Natural Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) has said.

“There are 529,527 residents living in Sumatra and Kalimantan who have been suffering from the disease. In Jambi, there are 129,229 people ... 115,484 in South Sumatera, 98,029 in South Kalimantan, 79,888 in Riau, 60,225 in Central Kalimantan, and lastly 46,672 in West Kalimantan,” BNPB's spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said on Friday, as quoted by metrotvnews.com.