Forest fires destroying climate change buffer
PEKANBARU: With fierce blazes raging in jungles from the Amazon to Indonesia, concerns are mounting about the impact as rainforests play a vital role in protecting the planet against global warming.
The latest outbreak is in Indonesia, where smog-belching fires started to clear land for agriculture are burning out of control, blanketing the region in toxic smog.
Mankind’s reliance on fossil fuels usually receives much of the blame for climate change, but scientists say that deforestation has also played a big role.
Forests are natural buffers against climate change as they suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
But forests worldwide have been logged on an industrialscale over the decades for timber and to make way for agricultural plantations.
Burning of large expanses of trees also releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide.
At the peak of Indonesia’s 2015 forest fires, the worst in the country for two decades, the country spewed more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each day than all United States economic activity for the same period, according to environmental watchdog the World Resources Institute.
Greenpeace estimated that in the past 50 years, more than 74 million hectares of Indonesia’s rainforests have been chopped down, degraded or burned.
They have often been destroyed to make way for plantations for palm oil and pulpwood industries, particularly on Sumatra and Borneo islands, with fires often started illegally to clear land.
Indonesia suffers forest fires annually, but this year’s appear to be the worst since 2015. The country’s disaster agency estimated that from January to last month, about 328,000 hectares of land was burned.
The country has, however, managed to slow the rate of deforestation in recent years.
Farmers and plantation owners are usually blamed for starting the fires as a quick and cheap way to clear land.
Major companies typically deny starting blazes and instead point to small-scale farmers and villagers.
The most serious fires occur in peatlands, which are highly combustible when drained of water to be converted into plantations.