Companies, lawmakers receive advice on how to reduce Singapore haze risk

World Resources Institue offers its analyses.

Prompted by the worst air pollution ever recorded in Southeast Asia, the World Resources Institute (WRI) has been closely monitoring the fires and resulting haze since June. The group shared four key findings that should help guide regional policymakers, companies and others to reduce the risk of future fires and haze.

The first insight is that over 1,500 square kilometers of land burned in the study area in Riau Province during the June fires and haze crisis. This was a large-scale environmental and human disaster that demands a thorough response from policymakers.

"The fires burned an area more than twice the size of Singapore, in the study area alone, and left behind large burn scars resulting in significant economic and other damage to forests and communities. WRI selected the 2.2 million hectares (ha) study area by examining areas with the highest density of fires. The study area and time frame were limited in scope due to the availability and expense of high-resolution satellite imagery. It is important to note that the amount of burning across the region was much more extensive than is reported here, as many fires fell outside of our study area," said Fred Stolle and Nigel Sizer, who co-penned the editorial outlining the WRI insights.

"Earlier WRI analysis showed that fires on this scale have occurred three times in the last ten years alone. The ASEAN Summit is the perfect opportunity for the region’s leaders to acknowledge the seriousness of these fires and the strong chance that they will recur soon unless concrete, collaborative steps to address the challenge are adopted. This could include measures such as establishing a blue ribbon panel of government, business and civil society leaders to develop priority recommendations for action by early 2014, with a commitment to follow through ahead of the next burning season later that year," they added.

The second insight is that many of the fires were illegal. They burned on peatland and in some cases protected areas, including the globally significant Tesso Nilo National Park.

"The new analysis found that 72 percent of the fires in the study area burned on peatland (a soil layer, often several meters deep, composed of partly decomposed organic material). Furthermore, extensive burning occurred in Tesso Nilo National Park, where 700 hectares of the 6,000 hectares within the study area was burned. Burning peatland and protected areas is illegal under Indonesian law. Burning peatland also results in high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, so much so that the emissions resulting from the fires will seriously reduce Indonesia’s ability to meet its GHG emissions reduction targets. Concession-holders and the Indonesian government should invest more in fire prevention in these areas and faster fire response capabilities," said Stolle and Sizer.

For its third insight, WRI said fires appear to have been very extensive within some company concession areas. Burn scars can be seen covering more than 100 square kilometers in each of two concessions, and a further 12 concessions had fires totaling between 10 and 100 square kilometers.

"WRI’s high resolution analysis found some very extensive and highly clustered large burn scars. Comparison with 2013 concession maps from the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry show which companies appear to have licenses to operate in these areas. As Figure 3 below shows, the largest clusters of burn scars were found on pulpwood concessions, while other large burn scars were also seen on oil palm concessions. Figure 4 below shows the extent of burn scars within two concessions that exhibit particularly large burned areas. As WRI has stressed, these results do not necessarily mean these companies are the instigators of the fires or are responsible, given known inaccuracies in the concession maps available for analysis. Responsibility for the fires can be assessed only with thorough, impartial investigations on the ground and more detailed concession maps. Therefore it is a priority that governments and companies commit to making all concession data public," said Stolle and Sizer.

The last insight reveals that decision makers across Southeast Asia can use the NASA daily fire alerts to monitor fires with confidence.

"WRI analysis shows that the medium-resolution NASA MODIS FIRMS system correctly detected fires 97 percent of the time, when compared with expert visual and GIS analysis of high-resolution imagery. This directly addresses a concern from many stakeholders about the accuracy of the NASA data. Not only is the NASA data highly accurate, it is also updated every day and available for free to everyone. Policymakers thus can focus on the steps needed to prevent fires and respond rapidly when they are detected, and do not necessarily need a new (expensive) monitoring system," said.

"Further refinement of the analysis summarized here is impeded by the poor quality of the publicly available concession maps for Indonesia. The heads of state meeting this week at the ASEAN summit should agree to publicly release the concession maps in their respective countries and to accelerate efforts to improve the quality of those maps. This will support more effective law enforcement, improved coordination between government agencies and between local and national governments, better analysis from universities and researchers, and the ability to develop of measures to prevent future fire and haze disasters. A commitment to transparent management of the fires and haze issues would go a long way to enabling many organizations to collaborate to address the challenge," they added.