The World Today
July 1998

The Burning Season

By Stephen Howard

The World Wide Fund for Nature called 1997 ‘the year the world caught fire.’ Time has moved on but the burning continues.  In the last twelve months large-scale fires have been reported in more than ten countries and at least 50 thousand square kilometres of forest has gone up in smoke: the environmental, social and economic consequences are profound. At worst there could be a catastrophic cycle of environmental decline, at best we should husband these scarce resources.

The forest fires in Brazil and Indonesia received considerable media attention since these two countries have the largest and second largest remaining areas of tropical forest. However, these were far from the only countries affected. Fires have also been reported in Venezuela, Guyana, Columbia, Mexico, Kenya, Rwanda, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Brunei.

Brazilian government statistics show that 60 thousand square kilometres — an area one and a half times the size of Wales — of the Amazon were destroyed between 1995 and 1997 through a combination of agricultural expansion and logging. Fire was used all too frequently as the primary agent of land clearance.

US National Space Research Institute satellite monitoring found 24,549 fires over 41 days last year, a twenty-eight per cent increase on the previous year.

Although the Institute for Environmental Research in the Amazon (IPAM) estimates that around seventy per cent of fires happen in previously deforested areas, this leaves approximately a third of them in pristine or secondary forest. An increase in burning is likely to produce an increase in the rate of deforestation.

Earlier this year fires were reported in the North Eastern areas of the Amazon in Roriama state. At the height of the blaze more than sixteen hundred men were reported to be fire fighting along a 400 kilometre line.

At the end of March the rain finally arrived a few hours after two Indian shamans performed a ‘rain dance’. The downpour extinguished the fires inside the Yanomami Indian reservation, although other affected areas, such as the Pacaraima region, near the Venezuelan border, were not so fortunate. Accurate estimates of damage are not yet available but guestimates range from one to 6.5 million hectares.

Fires were also recorded in the coastal rainforests of Brazil which have been largely cleared this century with only seven per cent of fragmented forest remaining. This is the world’s second most endangered vegetation type, after the forests of Madagascar, and although only one thousand hectares were burnt, this is critical.

Elsewhere in Latin America, some seven thousand fires were detected in Columbia where more than 130,000 hectares of forest burned last year, including parts of 17 national parks. Fires also raged in Venezuela, Mexico and Guyana.

Last year massive forest fires ravaged Indonesia’s rainforests with two million hectares going up in smoke. These mostly happened in Central and West Kalimantan and southern Sumatra. As the drought has continued this year new areas are burning in East Kalimantan.

The forests are being cleared at unprecedented rates for oil palm plantations and fast-growing trees for paper production. Outside protected areas the majority of Indonesia’s forests have been designated for logging. Poor control of the logging companies has led to vast tracts of forest being degraded and left vulnerable to fire.

Unfortunately many plantation companies go for the cheap option and set fire to the forest to clear it. The government’s official policy is to convert more than 40 million acres (18 million hectares) of rain forest to farmland and living space by 2020.

The Fire Danger Index (FDI) assesses the probability of fires in relation to how dry the environment and vegetation are. On 15 March the index reached two thousand - the maximum point on the scale - in some areas of the country, compared to an index of four hundred on 1 January. The forests are literally tinder dry.

Earlier this year 27 forest fires were reported on the Philippine island of Palawan, threatening five villages. Families lost their homes and an estimated two thousand hectares was affected.

Palawan, to the southwest of Manila, is about 250 miles long and home to several endangered species such as the world’s smallest primate, the tarsier. According to one source the biggest fires affected part of an area set aside by the government for the island’s indigenous Palawan tribes.

The Phillippines has become a net timber importer with forest cover declining from approximately seventy per cent in 1920 to less than twenty per cent today. The majority of the current 5-6 million hectares of forest land is secondary forest or plantation with less than fifteen per cent regarded as pristine forest. Any additional loss in this category is obviously tragic.

The Khao Yai national park in central Thailand, suffered several days of fires and in the nearby Huay Kha Khaeng national park, officials estimate that burning has destroyed more than 3,000 hectares of forest. Thailand lost half of its forest area between 1961 and 1989 and approximately half of the area gazetted as national forest reserve has no trees at all. This year an estimated 5,000 hectares of Vietnamese forests have burnt.

Fires have been reported near the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary and Supu Forest Reserve in Sabah. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Malaysia Project Director Dr Junaidi Payne said that Forest Reserves, the Wildlife Sanctuary, plantations and villages were at immediate risk. Sabah Forestry Department officers and WWF Malaysia staff fought the blaze, attempting to contain the peat fires by digging trenches and flooding them with river water.

 

El Niño

The El Niño is a phenomenon that occurs every few years in the Pacific with the westward flowing currents at the equator slowing or even reversing. This leads to warmer sea surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific near to Latin America which in turn disrupt the normal climatic patterns of the region with high pressures and droughts potentially occurring in Indonesia and Australia1.

Severe El Niño effects, such as the current one, can have far reaching consequences, disrupting weather patterns around the globe. El Niños normally happen every four to seven years, but the strength and frequency appear to be increasing and may be linked to global warming. Multi-year El Niño events like this one occur more rarely. There was one in 1982/3 when the last great forest fires in Borneo were observed; the fires in the second year then were at least as severe as during the first this time.

The El Niño has been blamed for the forest fires but it is important to remember that the fires are man made. El Niño did not set fire to anything but it merely created the conditions for the fires to burn for longer.

In both Indonesia and Brazil fires have been set as the cheapest way of clearing forest and scrub land for agriculture. In Brazil clearance is for a range of ranching and subsistence farming, whereas in Indonesia the fires are set primarily by plantation companies.

 

Logs away

In large areas of both countries forests are being opened up for timber extraction. Robust primary forests are converted into more open secondary forests which dry out more easily during the dry season.

Primary rainforest resists burning because of the modest ground vegetation, leaf litter and the closed canopy which helps retain moisture through short dry seasons. Forests that are opened up through logging lack such canopies and have more extensive ground cover.

In 1996 the Brazilian Space Agency revealed that the rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by more than one third since 1992, with illegal logging accounting for as much as eighty per cent of the 60 million cubic metres cut.

Agricultural expansion all too frequently follows along the logging roads. The Brazilian environment agency (IBAMA) lacks the teeth to enforce legislation and has no statutory authority to levy fines or intercept stolen timber.

The 1993 World Bank forestry sector review warned that in Indonesia official timber harvests were fifty per cent greater than was likely to be sustainable. When combined with illegal logging — which was estimated to be approximately equal to the legal cut — timber exploitation could be clearly seen as massively exceeding sustainable levels.

 

Recycled rain

Extensive forest, such as those of the Amazon, Congo basin and formerly Borneo, have a profound influence over regional climates. Rainfall is largely held within the forests, gradually evaporating and re-entering the atmosphere to fall again elsewhere.

The interior regions of large oceanic islands or continental forests are many hundreds of miles from coasts and are largely dependant upon this ‘recycled rainfall’ for survival.

Deforestation has been directly linked to desertification in several parts of the world and this has implications for human populations as well as the remaining ecosystems. As we erode the edges of our last remaining tropical forests we may well be threatening the viability of these systems.

Long term observers in the Amazon and elsewhere report a greater tendency for the forests to dry out. Daniel Nepstad, who has been funded by the World Bank to study the Brazilian fires, sums up the concerns: ‘We are facing a very dangerous scenario. Virgin forest that always acted as a firebreak because it did not burn is losing that ability and becoming flammable.’ As well as local or regional climates being affected by deforestation, there are likely to be far reaching consequences because of global climate change. A recent British government report concluded that ‘by the 2050s, tropical forests and grasslands will be at risk of decline’ and that ‘by the 2080s... tropical forests will be at risk of decline and loss in biomass and areal extent.’ This study looked at the impact of global climate change alone and did not include factors such as the fires and other causes of forest destruction.

All too frequently small farmers are blamed for the fires and although they are sometimes responsible it is the exception rather than the rule. In the Brazilian Amazon eighty eight per cent of forest clearance is for cattle ranching.

Similarly the plantation companies in Indonesia have been responsible, but not accountable, for many of the fires. Of 160 companies accused of involvement in last year’s burning, only 46 were fully investigated, and just five will be prosecuted.

The government of Indonesia has allocated a modest US$2 million for forest firefighting - probably less than one dollar per hectare of forest burnt. With the economic and political crises it is possible that even these funds will not be available. In Brazil, government funding for forest protection dropped more than sixty per cent from 1996 to 1997.

 

Forest peoples

Estimates of the number of forest dwelling people vary widely, but a conservative figure would be in the tens of millions. The extensive habitat destruction is likely to have displaced many thousands of them. They are frequently beyond the reach, or scope, of any emergency aid. Reports such as 330 residents homeless in two subdistricts of East Kalimantan are likely to represent just the ones who have been noticed.

The fires in North Eastern Brazil threatened the ancestral territory and possibly even the culture of the Yanomami people.

Forest dwelling peoples have frequently been denied rights to their traditional lands and are all too frequently usurped by national and international companies who lack a long-term interest in the local environment. In many countries the best agricultural land is held in a small number of hands and the landless poor have few options but to try farming on forest land.

Developing countries are often burdened with debt repayments and structural adjustment programmes which leave them little option but to exploit natural resources at unsustainable rates. Other pressures include consumption levels, migration and population growth, which is increasing by two million per year in Indonesia alone.

The economic crisis in South East Asia is likely to increase the pressure on forest resources and the prospect of continued fires. The pursuit of foreign exchange has already led to the removal of the log export ban in the Phillippines and is likely to fuel the export of forest products from elsewhere. The collapse of urban economies and resulting job losses have sent a flow of industrial workers back to their villages where they have little choice but to return to farming.

Many areas are suffering from the long term impact of drought and new farm land can sometimes only be made available by forest clearance. Fire is the method used. Even the better run and resourced forestry and national park authorities are likely to be stretched beyond their limits.

 

Threat to species

Estimates of the total number of species in the world vary from five to thirty million. Continued large-scale deforestation and forest degradation could result not only in an aesthetically and culturally degraded world lacking many of the large forest dependant mammals, such as tigers, Sumatran rhino, pandas, orangutan and gorillas, but in the permanent elimination of potential sources of food and drugs. Once species are lost, there is no going back.

Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, has 13,660 islands and is home to twelve per cent of the world’s flowering plant species, twelve per cent of all mammal species and seventeen per cent of all birds, reptiles and amphibians.

Sumatra and Borneo are the only remaining homes of the Orangutan, with between 15,000 and 30,000 left. Last year seventeen National Parks were damaged to some extent and many orangs were killed fleeing the flames. This year the fires are in different parts of Borneo, threatening other areas of forest and populations of orangutans. An Indonesian orangutan rescue centre was only saved from being burned to the ground by a wall meant to keep out humans.

In the coastal forest of Brazil there are only about seven hundred Golden Lion Tamarins left. The burning of one thousand hectares of forest is a major set back to the attempts to restore both the Tamarin population and the fragmented forest.

 

Smog cloud

Smog from the fires produced a forty per cent increase in respiratory infections in Manaus in the Amazon. A WWF Indonesia study estimates that the short term costs of health treatment, lost tourist revenue and industrial output in South East Asia was nearly US$1.4 billion. Singapore suffered a ten per cent drop in tourist revenue last year with much the same expected this year.

During the fires in north eastern Brazil all flights to Roraima’s capital were diverted to Manaus nearly 800 km away. At its worst, a 40 km wide cloud of smog blanketed Manaus itself.

 

Cycle of decline?

The carbon dioxide output of the fires has yet to be calculated, but it is likely to be hundreds or thousands of millions of tonnes, deforestation already accounting for twenty per cent of global emissions. Increased emissions can only accelerate global warming. The possible link between global warming and the El Nino effect indicates the potential for a catastrophic cycle of decline.

Newspapers in Kuala Lumpur reported ‘acid rain’ in Sabah state in Borneo with a pH of 3.85 instead of the usual value of 5.2. Acid rain on drought stressed natural vegetation and agricultural lands can only exacerbate problems. The large areas of burnt land with exposed soil and ash are likely to cause siltation and the contamination of streams and rivers with knock-on impacts for freshwater supplies and fisheries.

The short-term need in many areas is for better fire fighting equipment and global positioning systems to identify fire locations. However, we should work on prevention. It is difficult to overstate the importance of a robust long-term response to fires on this scale. There are no quick fixes and the action required is daunting.

We should ensure that forest management practices meet strict environmental standards that are independently monitored. International businesses can help by joining the many hundreds of companies around the world that are requesting independent certification of the sources of timber and paper. The Forest Stewardship Council already has 8 million hectares of well-managedforests.

The developed world and international aid agencies can fund capacity building in developing country forestry and environment agencies to help ensure that existing legislation can be enforced.

Widespread grass-roots education is needed to promote techniques to avoid run away fires. Small-scale agriculturalists have few choices but to use seasonal burning; education and outreach programmes can help build awareness of when to burn safely.

No one would deny a country the right to develop but land use changes should be carefully planned to balance local and national needs and to ensure prospects for future generations. Without adequate agricultural production and appropriate land tenure systems, forests will continue to be eroded and fire will be used to clear them. Protected areas should be established before the remaining forests are divided into a jigsaw of logging concessions.

 

Tough decisions

One of the most difficult areas is the political will to address the issues. Governments have to take tough decisions to curb excessive exploitation and all too frequently to deal with widespread corruption. Brazil’s recent commitment to triple the size of its protected forest area is a brave step but it will need international support for implementation. This support should go beyond loans and include reducing debt and increasing overseas development assistance to the levels agreed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

At worst we face a continued cycle of decline, with increased pressures on tropical forests, more fires and smog, an exacerbation of climate change and irreversible deforestation, forest degradation and loss of species. The large tropical forests that are the major repositories of the world’s plants and animal species could become a thing of the past within a few decades.

At best we can hope for a renewed attempt to deal with one of the most important environmental issues of our time, widespread improvements in forest management, the gradual elimination of illegal logging, responsible commercial agriculture and international support to match the task.

It is beyond our capacity to extinguish five million hectares of fires in little more than a year, but hopefully we can begin to deal with some of the causes and focus on prevention rather than cure.