Indonesia’s Responsibility for Keeping International Environment Safe from Effects of Wildfire

By Elmerald Daud & Najla Nur Fauziyah

INTRODUCTION

Ever since the biggest wildfire case in 1997, Indonesia has time and time again reported the occurance of forest fires. The recent one reported to be the biggest occured in 2019 which burnt 2.12 million acres of land surpassing the previous one in 2018 as told by Raffles Panjaitan, forest fire management acting director at the Forestry and Environment Ministry. Further, it also occurred this year in addition to the hazard of Covid-19 Pandemic. Forest fires has been an ongoing problem in Indonesia which occured mainly in Kalimantan and Sumatra. Every year, hundreds of thousands acre of land incinerated and the people suffered through thick haze of smoke which caused several respiratory diseases as the respiratory system is exposed to the associated presence of volatile chemical agents in the smoke.

Generally, these fires are caused by illegal human activities such as land clearing for palm plantation, fire usage as a weapon in land tenures, resource extraction including hunting or burning waste, and accidental fire caused by irresponsibly discarded cigarettes or unprotected cooking fires since human access to peatlands has increased. Alas, these haze of smokes do not only affect those resided in Indonesia, and instead spread throughout the region including but not limited to Malaysia and Singapore as its neighboring countries. Moreover, forest fires in itself will also affect the global climate with its massive carbon emission. Thus, the problem of forest fires is not solely a stand-alone Indonesia’s to suffer, but grow to be an international concern. In retrospect, Indonesia has violated international environmental law namely Transboundary Harm Principle which prohibits the expansion of pollution outside of its country. Indonesia is to be held responsible and exert its best effort to minimize the injury caused by these fires.

VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

In the international law there exists a principle called the Transboundary Harm Principle that states:

”Harm caused in the territory of or in other places under the jurisdiction or control of a State other than the State of origin, whether or not the States concerned share a common border.”

The wildfire that occurred in Kalimantan on 2019 was one of the worst wildfire ever happened in Indonesia. As the State where the wildfire occurred, Indonesia has an obligation to take all appropriate measures to prevent significant transboundary harm. The obligation to take minimization measures is a part of the due diligence. However, this duty of due diligence is not intended to guarantee that significant harm be totally prevented. If it is not possible to do so, Indonesia is obliged to exert its best possible efforts to minimize the risk.

The main elements of the obligation of due diligence involved in the duty of prevention is the degree of care expected from the Government. Indonesia should possess a legal system and sufficient resources to control and monitor the activities. However, the degree of care expected from every States is different as the development of each State is different. The government of Indonesia already tried to prevent such significant transboundary harm by spending up to IDR 2.5-3 Trillion in just September–December 2019, the funding for wildfire from January - October 2019 was only IDR 965 Billion. With such effort it is difficult to judge if Indonesia already did its obligation to exert its best efforts to minimize the risk properly.

As the 2019 wildfire is being managed to be taken care of (although the smokes still spread into the territory of Malaysia and Singapore), it is very disappointing to see that although Indonesia has exert an effort to minimize the risk of transboundary harm when a wildfire happens, Indonesia’s attempts to prevent the wildfire itself is still not optimal. It is proven by many other wildfires due to slash and burn technique conducted by the citizens in 2020. Although in Kalimantan up to this point of the year, the levels of wildfire had been reduced. However, in some other provinces the wildfire occurrences are increasing. The effort to prevent the wildfire itself has already been done by Indonesia, however it still can be improved. As Indonesia is also obliged to reduce to the minimum extent possible the damage of environmental effects beyond its jurisdiction due to utilization of natural resource.

CONCLUSION

In relation to its responsibilities as a State to combat the hazardous effects of forest fires, Indonesia has spent abundance amount of expense in 2019 alone. However, it is not enough to completely diminish the occurrences of forest fires since it happened again in the following of 2020. This proves that Indonesia has not been fully exerting its power to completely eliminate the problem at hand.

In lieu of trying to reduce the effect of forest fires with no real intention to diminish it completely, Indonesia shall consider reviewing the roots of the problem. Forest fires are largely caused by big palm oil corporations using unethical methods in land clearing. While Indonesia vowed to tackle and pursue these criminals, it is shown that the government is actually reluctant to establish a strict rules to its palm oil industry. The regulations in place will hold no meaning if the authority shows permissive attitude towards the corporations as they do as they please. Further, increasing media exposure towards the forest fires happening in Indonesia shall be done to create a sustained international pressure.