As the choking haze clears from Indonesia's forest fires, the government and some environmental groups are turning up the heat on palm-oil and paper companies they blame for starting many of the blazes.
The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) says nearly half of the 5,420 hot spots identified in Sumatra island's Riau Province between July 18 and Aug. 16 were in timber concessions and palm-oil plantations. The rest were on communal plantations, it found in a study released this week.
It has singled out at least two dozen companies, including some linked to Asia Pulp and Paper Co (APP) -- the world's largest pulp producer -- and Asia Pacific Resources International (APRIL), both based in Singapore.
The two deny the charges, pointing fingers at villagers living in and around their property. APP notes that 13 palm-oil farmers have been arrested in the past month for lighting fires on land managed by one of its suppliers, Arara Abadi.
"APP has invested many hundreds of millions of dollars developing sustainable plantation forests in Riau," the company said in a statement. "It is simply not logical for APP or its fiber suppliers to put this investment at risk by intentionally burning forests."
The debate over who is to blame has played out year after year in Indonesia since 1997, when forest fires destroyed 10 million hectares of land, blanketing Southeast Asia in white haze and sickening millions of people.
The government's response until now has been to round up a few farmers and wait for the haze to clear.
Companies that manage hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest and plantations have largely escaped responsibility, despite allegations of illegally setting fires, logging in protected forests and sometimes displacing villages in their concessions.
Fitrian Ardiansyah, WWF's coordinator of forest restoration and threat mitigation, said the foundation has repeatedly tried to bring the companies to court. And while the government has also threatened to take action, so far only one firm has been fined.
"I don't think local authorities have the capacity, the willingness or even the technology to investigate these cases," Ardiansyah said.
Criticized by its neighbors for not tackling the problem head-on, the government this month threatened to bring 10 companies -- eight Malaysian and two Indonesian -- to court, and to scour satellite data that points to hot spots in areas operated by lumber, palm-oil and rubber companies.
"If fires are found in concession of companies, of course we will prosecute them," Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said. "We are very serious about this. We have to do that for our people and our neighbors who have been subjected to the haze."
Proving wrongdoing, however, could be difficult.
Open burning has for decades been an accepted way of clearing debris in most Sumatran communities. Complicating matters further, scores of villages and small farms often fall within the boundaries of company plantations and logging concessions, making it difficult to prove responsibility.
"In a context where everyone is burning and the whole system operates based on burning, you're not going to change the system by fining a couple of people," said David Kaimowitz, director-general of the conservation group Center for International Forestry Research in Indonesia.
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