Forest and land fires (karhutla) are once again threatening the country. In 2020, the threat of forest and land fires resurfaced amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation resulted in a decrease in the Ministry of Environment and Forestry's (KLHK) budget for forest and land fires from Rp 56 billion to Rp 34 billion due to all aspects, including budget allocations, being focused on pandemic management.
Although Covid-19 has just occurred this year, the budget for forest and land fires has continued to decline since 2017. In fact, the trend of forest and land fires had increased and burned 1.6 million hectares of land in 2019. Not only in terms of budget, handling forest and land fires amid the pandemic also faces several challenges, including the portion of prevention from the central and regional governments that was originally 70:30 has changed to 30:70.
Furthermore, the implementation of Large-Scale Social Restrictions (PSBB) and layoffs have increased the use of fires to clear land. The health of communities living near forest and land fire sites is also at risk, as the smoke from forest and land fires increases their vulnerability to COVID-19 infection. To address the dual threat of forest and land fires and COVID-19, the government has prepared various anticipatory strategies. One of these is integrating data on suspected COVID-19 cases in haze-risk zones to allow for separate evacuation from healthy individuals.
Another strategy is to anticipate fire hotspots through monitoring by regional officials and utilizing a dashboard system to monitor hotspot-prone areas. The government is also managing peat ecosystems, including deploying relevant agencies to maintain peat water levels.
This research is the result of a collaboration between Madani Berkelanjutan and Katadata Insight.
https://katadata.co.id/infografik/5f33f6cdde665/siapkah-kita-hadapi-karhutla
