Pulp companies like APP and APRIL to some degree exemplify the dilemma facing authorities. They insist they have a policy banning open burning on their land, but acknowledge that fires -- either illegal or accidental -- have been set in recent weeks within their concessions.
"We don't start fires. We actively prevent and extinguish fires," said Mark Werren, director of fiber services for APRIL, adding that his company has a 300-member rapid response team that fights fires on its 250,000 hectares of acacia and eucalyptus plantations with a helicopter, air tractor and water pumps.
"Fires are usually in areas surrounding the plantations -- or accidents in the plantations due to cooking or, say, cigarettes," he said.
"In the concessions we operate in, we don't have total control over those areas. There are other people living in the concessions, communities in the concessions and farming in the concessions," he said.
Given the difficulty of prosecuting cases, Kaimowitz and others say authorities would be better off banning development in soggy peat lands -- which produce the most smoke and are about the only undeveloped areas left in many parts of Sumatra.
He said the government should also demand companies improve their fire-management plans and offer incentives to villagers, who have lit fires in peat land to plant crops or start small palm-oil plantations.
"The fire problems are heavily linked to the timber and palm-oil plantations coming into these peat land areas," he said. "What you need to do is keep people out of certain peat land areas."
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