By Harry Jacques
BENGKALIS, Indonesia, Nov 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Firefighter Ibnu Hajar stopped near the top of a wrought-iron observation tower in Bengkalis on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, and looked inland over miles of oil palm trees planted up to the edge of the northeastern coastline.
“In 2015, all this was lost,” he said.
Five years ago, a strong El Nino climate pattern prolonged Sumatra’s main dry season beyond October, delaying rains needed to douse wildfires burning across expanses of peatland.
The result was an environmental and public health disaster, with 2.6 million hectares (6.4 million acres) scorched, and half a million people sickened across the archipelago.
Indonesia’s planet-warming emissions exceeded those of the entire U.S. economy for 38 out of 56 days during the 2015 crisis.
Small-scale farmers in Bengkalis regency, part of Riau province, have set fires for decades to prepare land to plant cassava, pineapple and rambutan, said Teguh Surya, head of the Sustainable Madani Foundation, a Jakarta-based environmental group.
Research shows fire has traditionally been used in land cultivation owing to its speed, low cost and desirable side effects in reducing soil acidity and incinerating pests.
But such fires increasingly spread out of control after acacia and oil palm plantation firms began draining peatlands on an industrial scale in the 1990s, said Bengkalis-born Teguh.
Oil palm and acacia trees fare poorly in waterlogged soil, so companies excavated vast networks of canals to drain it, rendering the carbon-rich landscape highly flammable.
