The Impact of Wildfires in Indonesia on Climate Concerns in

the Pacific Ocean Region

Nabilla Arsyafira - FHUI 2014
Satria Afif Muhammad - FHUI 2015

Statement of Issue
The Pacific is home to a multitude of weather phenomena perpetually influencing
the world. The chain reactions caused by said phenomena, such as storms, have
recently become harder to anticipate. Though not independently responsible,
climate change is a major factor. It results from the accumulation of greenhouse
gases (GHG) that mostly carbon generated by human activity. Indonesia, is the
sixth largest carbon emitter in the world. More than 50% of its emissions come from
land use change and forestry (LUCF), which was conventionally achieved by
draining peat bogs and using fire to clear land. Combined with drought in an El
Nio year, such land use practices can inflict catastrophic wildfires varying in forms.
Peat fires alone had contributed to more than 40% of Indonesias GHG emissions
in 2010.

Ecological balance is fundamentally disturbed. Aside from pyrrhic mass

deforestation, animal habitats are critically destroyed.
The agricultural production in Indonesia suffers. As a consequence of
animal habitat destructions, animals are affected, including bees, which are
crucial to the pollination of apples, melons, onions, potatoes, tomatoes and
other crops.
The ensuing damage takes toll on both Indonesias regional and
national economy. It is estimated that the economic cost for Southeast
Asia would be $14 billion. That includes factors like lost agricultural
production and health costs because of emissions, airport closings, the
delayed transportation of goods and missed work days.
The wildfires are highly preventable. In 2015, Indonesias Forestry
Ministry announced that more than 4.2 million acres of forest and open land
had been destroyed by the fires. It is worth noting that 99% of wildfire
occurrences in Indonesia is human caused.

Policy Options
1
Indonesias president Joko Widodo has shut down the countrys REDD+
Agency and merged it with the Ministry of Environment and Forestry
(MoEF) through Presidential Decree No. 16/2015. Indonesias REDD+
Agency under MoEF is recognized as the worlds first Cabinet level REDD
Institution.
o Advantages: Indonesia cemented its commitment to systematically
eradicate deforestation and forest degradation issues by
incorporating the efforts to the government. State budgets are
allocated for the annual and long term means to achieve such
purpose.
o Disadvantages: The REDD+ Agencys merger with MoEF is not in
accordance with the initial LoI that preceded its existence, which
stated that the agency must report directly to the president, not the
minister. Furthermore, REDD+ Agency scope work was not
exclusively limited to the fields of forestry, which were under MoEF

1
An abbreviation that is formally used to describe developing countries' efforts to reduce
emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and foster conservation, sustainable
management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.
 authority. The REDD+ Agency also dealt with other ministries such
as the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and local
governments. The aftermath of this policy includes corruption: in
2016, only US$60 million has been properly channelled of the US$1
billion that Norway offered to Indonesia to reduce deforestation and
forest degradation.

Indonesias President has signed Presidential Decree No. 9/2016 to push

the use of Geospatial Information (GI) for Indonesian development. The
decree appoints a One Map acceleration team, implementation team and
spells out GI targets toward 2019. The Coordinating Minister for Economic
Affairs, is tasked to strategically coordinate the overall implementations of
the decree. This includes monitoring and evaluating the applications of the
One Map policy as well as setting up practical policies. The One Map
implementation team, chaired by the head of Indonesias Geospatial
Information Body (GIB) is tasked to coordinate the technical
implementations of the decree.
o Advantages: The objective is to have one reference; one standard,
foundation mapone geoportal as a whole. The aim is to facilitate a
stronger evidence-based policy making, especially policies on
spatial planning. This is crucial on so many levels, for instance, to
mitigate wildfire incidents more efficiently.
o Disadvantages: The problem revolves around political will.
Technically, synchronizing thematic maps from various
governmental agencies is possible. But one of the main obstacles to
developing a single map is the reluctance of government agencies
to collaborate, particularly those with the authority to issue permits.
For years, actors in governmental agencies in production-oriented
sectors, have benefited from unclear, and inconsistent regulations.
District governments have reinterpreted these unclear regulations to
issue licenses both to enhance local revenue and for rent seeking.
The fact that different agencies use different maps with different,
and sometimes outdated, data, also complicates law enforcement.

Policy Recommendations
Current policy options need many re-evaluations because of the lack of autonomy
for the instrumental agencies that were supposed to be independent, and because
it is prone to certain institutional interventions. There needs to be an efficient law
enforcement system that can bypass and be held supreme to any political schemes
at play, such as providing a fool proof prosecution mechanism for the people who
commit wildfire-triggering crimes.

Word count: 800 Word