Badan antariksa NASA mengatakan, asap bersumber dari pembakaran lahan gambut yang basah di perairan Kalimantan dan Sumatra. “Kebanyakan pembakaran dilakukan di lahan gambut yang menganggur dan sudah dibersihkan, api menembus bagian bawah tanah yang basah, yang menjadi sumber bahan bakar tak terbatas,” kata David Gaveau dari Center for International Forestry Research.

Indonesia produces 52 per cent of the world’s palm oil, used in everything from ice cream to lipstick, an industry whose exports earned $US18bn last year. It is meaning that the economic pressures are great. “The reason fires happen is because people are making a lot of money off of them,” said Louis Verchot, director of environment research at the Bogor-based Center for International Forestry Research.

Negotiators in Paris say it’s essential to safeguard tropical forests in order to curb carbon emissions. Indonesia ranks among the top five emitters because of its errant forestry practices. In early October, Widodo cut short his first trip to the United States to return to Indonesia to deal with the raging fires. It was a symbolic gesture that Louis Verchot, director of environment research at the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research, hopes he will follow with much-needed reforms. “He’s giving some of the right signals,” Mr. Verchot says. “Whether he has the ability to address the root causes of these fires has yet to be seen.”  The news also published in Yahoo! News  and Sports – Yahoo! News UK.

Beyond understanding the fires and their effects on the atmosphere, other scientists and conservation groups are mining satellite data in order to reduce the use of fire. However, some researchers caution against using satellite observations alone to assign blame for particular fires. A tangle of national, provincial, and tribal laws can lead to confusion over who owns a given parcel of land, explained David Gaveau, a remote sensing scientist with the Center for International Forestry Research.

A complex network of economic interests drives the fires. Environmentalists often blame plantation owners. Plantation owners tend to blame locals. Unclear land ownership can add to the confusion. “The reason fires happen is because people are making a lot of money off of them,” said Louis Verchot, director of environment research at the Bogor-based Center for International Forestry Research.

Jokowi has pledged sweeping land-management reforms in a bid to address the archipelago’s disastrous annual wildfires. The most serious haze crisis was during the El Nino in 1997-8, when around 11 million hectares of land was burned. But research by the Center for International Forestry Research shows that Kalimantan and Sumatra remain vulnerable to spells without rain.

Saving the world’s forests is essential to avoid runaway climate change, but the detail will only emerge after an agreement. It is harder than you might imagine to measure “net” deforestation – the difference between what is lost and what is gained.  Because while forest loss is quick and visible from year-on-year comparisons of satellite images, regrowth is much slower and less visible, says Peter Holmgren, director of CIFOR, an international forest research institute.

Vinod Kumar, a 30-yearold progressive farmer from Anjanthali village in the district is all set to fly to Paris to participate in the Global Landscape Forum. He will participate in a panel discussion with farmers and scientists on the impact of climate change on farming and its sustainable solutions.