Kepala US Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USDAFS), Dale Bosworth mengatakan siap bekerja sama dan membantu Indonesia mengatasi kebakaran hutan dan pembalakan liar. Menurut Dale, pengalaman dalam mengatasi kebakaran hutan dan pembalakan liar yang selama ini ditangani di Amerika akan diberikan kepada pemerintah Indonesia, yang secara teknis menggunakan perangkat citra satelit. Di Indonesia, USDAFS telah bekerjasama dengan CIFOR dalam melakuan penelitian penyebab dan penyelesaian masalah kebakaran hutan yang kian marak.Pakuan Raya Bogor quote same story

Revitalisasi sektor pertanian, kehutanan dan perikanan bisa disebut berhasil jika sudah mampu mengentaskan masyarakat tani dan warga pedesaan lain dari jeratan dan belenggu kemiskinan. Masalah utama adalah keterbatasan akses terhadap pendidikan, informasi, sumberdaya dan lembaga keuangan. Terkait dengan pembukaan akses terhadap rakyat di kawasan hutan negara di Jawa yang dikelola Perum Perhutani, Herry Purnomo mengemukakan pendapatnya di harian AgroIndonesia.

Five south-east Asian countries on Thursday signed up to a series of joint measures aimed at preventing a repeat of the choking haze that has blanketed much of the region for months, costing their economies hundreds of millions of dollars. Greg Clough, a spokesman for the Centre for International Forestry Research, based in Indonesia, welcomed the regional plan. “We can’t expect poor rural farmers to stop using fire to clear land for farming because it is a very cheap and effective farming tool,” he said. “Reimbursing them for their loss of livelihood may encourage them to do that.”

The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) based in Bogor, Indonesia, said that in 1997 Indonesia’s peatland fires accounted for 60 percent of the haze despite having only 20 percent of the total area burnt."As more easily accessible upland forests disappear, peat land areas are increasingly harvested by companies and individuals," CIFOR, which is governed by an international board of trustees, said in a statement released during the Singapore meeting. Daniel Murdiyarso, a CIFOR forestry and environmental management specialist, said that Southeast Asia has 60 percent of the world’s tropical peatlands. "Fire and ecological change in these areas could seriously exacerbate regional haze and global greenhouse gas emissions," he said in the statement. Another CIFOR expert, Una Chokalingham, said that Indonesia’s peat swamps contain 21 percent of the earth’s land-based carbon. "Unless actions are taken, that carbon could become hot-house gas in 40 years," Chokalingham said.

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Ms Frances Seymour, the director-general of the Indonesian-based Centre for International Forestry Research, hoped that governments would distinguish between rural farmers and big companies responsible for starting the fires. "The law needs to be tweaked to focus on prosecuting big companies — rather than poor farmers, who burn a small and specific area of land. There has been a serious lack of prosecutions made against the belligerent companies," said Ms Seymour. "So, the reality is companies cause the fires because they can get away with it." She recommended a two-prong approach: A payment scheme for rural farmers to adopt alternative methods and work, as well as the implementation of a performance bond in which companies that flout regulations would be immediately punished with the forfeiture of their bond.

Menurut kajian the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), reformasi kehutanan melahirkan sejumlah ‘raja’ baru di daerah. Lebih lanjut dikatakan, iklim reformasi kehutanan dan desentralisasi telah memunculkan elit lokal yang mengelola hutan tanpa berpegang pada azas kelestarian. Hasil dari pengelolaan hutan sebagian besar tidak dinikmati masyarakat banyak. Selanjutnya, hasil kajian bersama CIFOR dan Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI) menunjukkan, desentralisasi dan reformasi memunculkan konflik baru. Masyarakat lokal di seluruh tanah air menuntut hak mereka yang telah dirampas di zaman orde baru.

Southeast Asian environment ministers will meet in Singapore on Friday to discuss ways to help Indonesia extinguish forest and brush fires. Environment ministers from Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand would be attending. "It’s good to see ASEAN try to resolve the issue," said Greg Clough, spokesman for the Center for International Forestry Research in Indonesia. "I’m reluctant to say whether there’ll be any impact. It’ll have impact in terms of putting pressure on the Indonesian government in ratifying the agreement, but it remains to be seen whether that will happen," he said, referring to a regional haze pact.Mail & Guardian, Yahoo! News India, China Post and Environmental News Network quote same story

Penyebab kebakaran hutan ini tidak melulu karena pengaruh fenomena alam. Malahan beberapa penelitian menyebutkan penyebab terbesar adalah tingkah polah manusia. Studi yang dilakukan CIFOR (Center for International Forestry Research), ICRAF (International Centre for Research in Agroforestry)dan the United States Forest Service tahun 1998 menunjukkan sebagian besar data hot-spot kebakaran dari gambar satelit dimulai di daerah perusahaan-perusahaan perkebunan kelapa sawit dan pulp. Pihak perkebunan menggunakan api sebagai pembersih lahan. Api masih dianggap sebagai alat yang murah dan efektif untuk melakukan pekerjaan tersebut.