Environment Minister Calls for Law Revisions, Rejects Task Force as Haze Thickens Over Jakarta
Jakarta. Revisions to environmental laws must be made, but a designated haze task force is unnecessary, the Environment Minister has said as the haze crisis shows little sign of ending anytime soon.
It is necessary to revise the environmental law in terms of forest fires, however the idea to create a special force to deal with the issue is unnecessary, official said.
Siti Nurbaya, Environment and Forestry Minister, pointed to the 2009 Law on Environmental Protection and Management which allows companies to burn two hectares of land to clear space for operations — contributing to the nation-wide forest fires leading to months of thick haze blanketing the western part of Indonesia, particularly Sumatra and Kalimantan.
The Minister believes it is too easy for companies to gain permission for the fires, needing only the approval of urban ward chiefs and subdistrict leaders.
“That is why we are considering to revise the law. Besides, under what circumstances is such act an allowed? We have to make it clearer,” Siti said on Monday.
She has rejected calls from the House of Representatives to launch a special task force, maintaining that the ministry is responding to the crisis adequately. In Riau, a major source of haze, hot spots have been reduced by 44 percent, the Minister said.
“To label this a [national] disaster, we still need to study everything. What will happen in the future, what the issue would cost us,” she said.
The national weather agency, or BMKG, reported on Sunday that three-quarters of Indonesian territory was affected to varying degrees by the haze, including the capital Jakarta, with fires burning out of control across hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest in Sumatra and Kalimantan — the heartland of Indonesia’s palm oil industry — as well as in the relatively untouched forests of Sulawesi and Papua, where the government has massive ambitions of clearing more space for farmland.
The only areas not affected by the haze as of Sunday, according to the BMKG, were Yogyakarta, Central Java, parts of East Java, East Nusa Tenggara, and the northern part of Papua.
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