Minister Of Environment And Forestry: Analysis Of Forest And Land Fires Must Be Objective

Minister of Environment and Forestry (LHK) Siti Nurbaya (Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - Minister of Environment and Forestry (LHK) Siti Nurbaya does not want the public to see the problem of forest and land fires (karhutla) only from one side. Siti said, the problem must be viewed objectively, starting from understanding the definition of hotspots and firespots, to statistical chance figures from hotspots to firespots.

In translating data related to Karhutla, Siti said that it must be done with precise field references, not assumptions, let alone illustrated pictures.

"This is unfair to the people, including the private sector, and many other parties who in the last 3 years have wanted to work well and have complied. The Karhutla analysis used must be really fair, no framing," said Siti in a written statement, Sunday, June 28th.

Meanwhile, Expert Advisor to the Minister of Environment and Forestry, Afni Zulkifli, said that the Karhutla problem is still a threat in Indonesia. In fact, the challenge is even greater because there are many misperceptions about understanding Karhutla itself.

Afni explained that the threat of forest and land fires would be even greater if the misperception in the public space was continued. Misperceptions can delegitimize good work by blurring information without education in the community.

"This will also greatly influence the evaluation actions, or even policy making by stakeholders," said Afni.

Afni revealed a number of misperceptions related to Karhutla. First, it is about understanding the definition of forest and land fire control. He said, many parties understood that control was only limited to blackout and law enforcement.

In fact, the control of forest and land fires according to Minister of Environment and Forestry Regulation 32/2016 is a working concept in a complete unit which contains six elements, namely planning, prevention, prevention, post-fire, work coordination, and alertness.

Misperceptions that resulted in the expansion of forest and land fires at the planning stage, was exemplified during a fire incident in early 2019 in Rupat, Riau. At that time, officers could not immediately extinguish small hotspots because the local government argued that they had not knocked on the hammer and admitted that they did not have sufficient budget for prevention.

"Fire and smoke cannot wait for the hammer strike budget. In fact, there are also findings that the Level II Regional Government is only resigned to waiting for the Provincial or National Task Force to come down. If it fails to plan and is properly prevented starting from the site level, the fire will almost certainly grow bigger and harder to extinguish, "he said.

The next misperception is understanding hotspots or hotspots. Afni revealed that several parties stated that all hotspots captured by satellites were considered hotspots (hotspots), from a confidence level of 0-80 percent. In fact, not all hotspots are firespots (locations that have been verified as fire).

For example, data from Walhi states that the period from January 1 to June 20, 2020, there were 44,093 hotspots in Indonesia. It turned out that with a confident level of 80 percent, there were only 870 hotspots in the same period.

By comparing the number of baseline hotspots in 2015, based on the Terra / Aqua Satellite (NASA), the number of hotspots was 70,971 points. This means that in comparison to 2015 and 2020 hotspots as of June, there was a decrease in the number of hotspots by 70,101 points or 98.77 percent.

"It turns out that the numbers differ greatly, because the satellite does capture images innocently. If from a confident level of 0 percent it becomes a reference for publishing to the public, it is clearly not quite right. Because the tin roofs of people's homes are also often caught by satellites as hotspots. there are fires (firespots), "said Afni.

It should be, said Afni, that hotspots at a confident level of 80 percent and above should be the reference for information to the public. Even then, it still needs to be checked in the field to ensure the truth of the hotspots originating from fires.

"In this way, the public should be educated, not continue to be given inaccurate data. Inaccurate information will lead to perceptions or even inappropriate recommendations," he said.

The next misperception is to think that the Ministry of Environment and Forestry is the only law enforcement agency, misperceptions regarding the determination of early status of alertness, including the misperception of understanding the diversity of forest status in Indonesia. This is important because there are different forests with different administrative mandates.

"The supervisory mandate is cross-ministerial, local government or private. While hotspots do not recognize administrative boundaries like this. If there is no misperception, then recommendations for evaluation and strategies to avoid recurring fires can also be carried out appropriately by stakeholders," said Afni.