In the first and second week of September, the Standard Index of Air Pollution in Pekanbaru Riau stayed in the status of “very unhealthy” and “dangerous”. The Governor in act of Riau must announce the condition of Air Pollution Emergency. The post-decision of the status does not provide a significant meaning for the prevention of this smoke disaster. Until now, the thick haze still fluctuates in covering Pekanbaru and other cities in Sumatera Island and Kalimantan. Conversely, pressure on the Governor in act is stronger to evacuate 6.7 million citizens of Riau, even bringing back the desire for independence for a group of people who lost trust to the Central Government. Along with this haze calamity as well, the increasing demand for HTI and oil palm plantations getting higher, to be responsible, revoked its license and withdraw from Riau. Finally, only heavy rains which can calm down the anger of the people who become more flare up because of the haze.
How actually we should see this problem, is there any ways or solutions which give goodness for all, the wrong still responsible and the suffering one can get a good compensations. Before, let’s see clearly what has actually become the root of the problems, the problem itself, the effect, and the efforts which can be done to prevent the disaster to celebrate its 19th birthday next year. However, it is clear that the impact of losses is extremely remarkable, hundreds of thousands of people exposed to ARIs, hundreds of flights canceled, schools were closed for weeks, allegedly economic losses incurred to 20 trillion Rupiah by 2014 and 22 Trillion Rupiah by 2015, pathetic.
The cause of the smoke disaster is the massive peat fires in both the land and the forest. In one of the national private TV shows the title of “forest fire” is not wrong, if the forest fire is on the peat land, in fact, this fire is 70% percent more in non-forest area. This means that the fire is more accurately said peat land fires. Why is it easy to catch fire? The answer is because it is dried. Why is it dried? Because if not dried it cannot be used for the cultivation of crops, especially oil palm and industrial crops such as acacia which currently dominates the land cover in Riau Province.
If we look closely, the incidence of land fires is closely related to the presence of oil palm plantation companies and HTI that was present in the 1980s and peaked in 1997, where there was a terrible fire and great smoke disaster. At that time, it was the first time education in Riau Province known to smoke holiday. Until now the expansion of oil palm plantations and HTI is still going on, to enter the peat of archipelago. Justification of the use of technology called eco-hydro, i.e. by controlling the water table in accordance with the needs, if the flood is released and if the dry season is held as a water reserve, proved to unable to withstand the peat land fires. Therefore, during the dry season coupled with the El-Nino phenomenon, dry peat becomes a “fuel” that is ready to burn with a little spark and do not know the area that is controlled by the company or by the community.
Peat is a unity of ecosystems that cannot be separated in its management. Company management that operates on peat soils generally has the ability to maintain a water table during the dry season. In contrast to community land, which is generally located around HTI land and oil palm plantations. For example, oil palm companies that work with communities to meet their production capacity, there are many community lands that do not have good land management. In general it can be said, especially self-help farmers, very weak in peat-land governance, lacks strong institutional and monotonous community economic activities and tends to follow others. So far, the government has not been able to violate economic laws, people are motivated to plant oil palm because the demand for oil palm FFB is still very high. Although the current price is not profitable, but it is believed that it will get better like the trends of the previous years.
Well, this is where the opportunity of the company, both HTI and oil palm can help strengthen the capacity of communities in the management of land resulting mutualism symbiosis between companies and communities, one of them through serious CSR and responsible. However, the economic motive will prompt or slow the community to open the land. Raise the chance of the occurrence of land fires to reoccur. In addition to other issues, such as land conflicts of local communities, native communities with the migrant communities, as well as communities with the companies in reserve areas, occupations, and others. The company is no longer just waiting for the government to make the program to the community, because it will not solve the problem, and should be able to cooperate with the government together to solve the community problems, especially the prevention of land fires that are synergistic with the existing development programs. Because it must be admitted, local governments still have limitations in the affairs of human resources and funds to conduct land fire prevention programs.
Strengthening the governance of community land can be undertaken in conjunction with village government and community to participate in participatory mapping of all areas and resources, so that the community recognizes the land they owned, border, land characteristics and potential utilization. So that with the system of land governance, and also especially for the water system so that the condition of the peat is maintained in a state of wet and not prone to burn. The company can also recognize community land and if it is possible to become a unity of management with the land owned by the company, can control the surface of the water together. It is including in the manufacture of canals’ partition by people who are more massive, where the partition is located and made by the company. So the responsibility of the canal’s partition, or the water gate become the responsibility of the company and the community, it is very profitable for both parties. Usually, the company argues that it is impossible to burn land that has been planted especially they are approaching the age of harvesting. Rationally, if there is no other motives, it may be true, but when the fire starts from the surrounding land, or from the community land, it is certain that fires can also spread to the company’s land, and both sides suffer losses and may be accused to do or careless regarding the incident of land fire. Therefore, corporate cooperation with landowners around the concession is needed.
Equally important is the strengthening of the institutional community. Strategically, people who have a land area around the company can form groups, such as farmer groups, which in addition to functioning as a medium of learning, production and economy, can also be the Community of Concerned Fire (CCF), because essentially CCF is not a society that extinguishes fire during a fire incident, in fact they are not capable of doing so, except for very small fires. However, CCF are people who should be concerned with fire incident by not doing activities that cause land fires, and care to remind others not to engage in arson activities, for whatever the reasons are. People who have land around the company’s land, surely those who are very concerned with the land they have, emotionally they have a strong bond with the peat lands they control. By fostering groups, through their capacity in land use and forming group rules that bind their fellowmen to not engage in land-burning activities, will greatly assist as a social control of fire lands.
Simultaneously, diversification of the economic activities of the community can also be done. If the community still wants to open palm plantation, it cannot be avoided, because the palm is still promising, but still be noticed by not burning the land, but can be assisted by the company for the use of heavy equipment. If possible to have plants that are friendly with peat ecosystems such as coconut or pineapple, or even indeed plants that is endemic wetlands such as sago, or wood plants such as Meranti mangrove and Jelutung. The community will be able to choose freely according to the economic needs they owned or sovereign over the types of crops that will be cultivated on their owned land. Here the role of the company is to help the certainty of agricultural productions marketing produced by the community
The three approaches are arranged in a planned, systematic, and participative through the guidance of trained assistants who have the ability to become facilitators. Funds incurred by the companies in fire prevention through community counseling will be much less than the losses caused by land fires, calculated from the number of burned plants and the energy spent to deal with land-law cases, either intentionally or unintentionally. Thus, there is a win-win solution that is responsible and dignified for the company and society. This has been tested by the writer with one of the palm oil companies in Indragiri Hilir, and proved, there is a significant reduction of hotspots, which in 2013 and 2014 as one of the largest hotspot contributor in Inhil, in 2015, it is almost said zero hotspot in villages conducted by village-based fire prevention assistance activities.
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This article was written by Arifudin, student of Counseling and Development Communication, Graduate School, UGM and was published in Riau Pos daily on September 29, 2015.