The US government, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Center for International Forestry (CIFOR), has launched a partnership to address critical environmental issues related to forestry management and biodiversity protection in Indonesia. The USAID Indonesia Mission says the partnership will include collaborative research and scholarships for emerging Indonesian leaders to attend US universities.

The fires have been an annual problem since the mid-1990s, but this was the worst year since 1997, when blazes spread across nearly 10 million hectares. Greed is the cause. Herry Purnomo, a scientist at Center for International Forestry Research, said it costs just $7 to clear a hectare of land by burning, compared to $150 to do so with tractors. Indonesian law bans clearing land by burning, except by small-scale farmers who are allowed up to 2 hectares.

The fires have been an annual problem since the mid-1990s, but this was the worst year since 1997, when blazes spread across nearly 10 million hectares. Greed is the cause. Herry Purnomo, a scientist at Center for International Forestry Research, said it costs just $7 to clear a hectare of land by burning, compared to $150 to do so with tractors. Indonesian law bans clearing land by burning, except by small-scale farmers who are allowed up to 2 hectares.

New research has lent more weight to allegations about an illicit “land for votes” culture in Indonesia that inevitably leads to an increase in the number of forest fires during local elections season. That is because there is a higher possibility of the land parcels, handed out as campaign incentives by errant regional leaders, being cleared for cultivation using the illegal slash-and-burn method. Dr Herry Purnomo, a scientist at the Centre for International Forestry Research who led the study, said satellite data has shown that there were more fires – which cause haze – within the year leading up to a regional election.

So if the problem is a human-made disaster, the solution should be easy, right? World leaders should band together and pressure the Indonesian government into action, right. ? That is probably not going to be a helpful approach, if you ask Frances Seymour. “Governments are sensitive to adverse international attention, and it can help galvanize political will to do something,” Seymour is a senior fellow at Center for Global Development and used to be the director general of Center for International Forestry Research, which is headquartered in Indonesia.

Fires in Indonesia are not like most other fires. Due to the large deposits of peat lining the coasts of Borneo and Sumatra they are extremely difficult to extinguish. They smolder under the surface for long periods, often for months. Usually, firefighters can only put them out with the help of downpours during the rainy season. And they release far more smoke and air pollution than most other types of fires. Peat fires start to burn in Indonesia every year because farmers engage in “slash and burn agriculture,” a technique that involves frequent burning of rainforest to clear the way for crops or grazing animals. In Indonesia, the intent is often to make room for new plantings of oil palm and acacia pulp. “Most burning starts on idle, already-cleared peatlands and escapes underground into an endless source of fuel,” explained David Gaveau of the Center for International Forestry Research.

With the forest fires still raging on parts of the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan, damaging the tropical environment, while the toxic haze still spreads to other parts of Southeast Asia, having caused an estimated 500,000 cases of respiratory tract infection as well as 19 casualties, the ongoing disaster has been labelled a crime against humanity. A new and interesting research report, released by Dr. Herry Purnomo (scientist at the Bogor-based Center for International Forestry Research), points to a link between local elections and spikes in Indonesian forest fires. Purnomo states that over the past decade forest fires tend to spike prior to and just after local elections as candidates (cooperating with local businessmen) give land (or the right to use land) to local voters (possibly to village heads who then turn to local residents) in exchange for support. Moreover, the country’s notorious weak law enforcement provides further support for this situation.

Indonesia’s forest fire-induced haze that has shrouded Southeast Asia for months has probably been made worse by electioneering ahead of the country’s local polls in December, a study has found. The practice of giving land handouts during campaigns increases access to forest that can be cleared by fire for plantations, according to research by forestry scientist Herry Purnomo at the independent Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research. Fires have increased in the years when local polls have also been held, he said.