The material that follows has been provided by Overseas Development Institute INDONESIA AND THE 1997-98 EL NIÑO: FIRE PROBLEMS AND LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS

The 1997-98 El Niño is among the strongest recorded and low rainfall in Indonesia set the conditions for widespread fires. At the same time, it is clearer during this particular El Niño than it has been in the past that many fires are being deliberately set. They must be understood in the context of competing land-claims from government and private companies on the one hand, and local people with customary rights to land on the other. The 1997 El Niño is the first in which the resources of Land Satellite imagery and the Internet have been harnessed to demonstrate quite clearly where the fires are taking place, and why. Policy conclusions • While the weather conditions that create drought and flammable forests are quite natural, the factors which have turned those events into a disaster are man-made. • They are the result of social, economic and political decisions to encourage the conversion of forests into tree-crop estates and rice-fields, and to ignore the value of the forests to local communities, whose preferred land-use would be to retain them. They are also the result of deliberate policies of unpreparedness and inaction in the face of fires. • The adoption of better policies to improve standards of land stewardship is required when new areas for agriculture are selected. • Fire hazard should be especially feared where peat-land areas are cleared. Soil fertility is usually low in these areas, and the best long-term economic use will often be to retain the area as forest. • The media and the Internet have, for the first time, played a decisive role in this particular El Niño event. • The events of 1997-98 demonstrate how research and a more effective action plan should be designed in readiness for the next El Niño