Bakar at her ministry's office in Jakarta on Sunday pointed out that the forest fire area in 2015 reached 2.6 million hectares, with transboundary haze occurring for two months. Meanwhile, in 2022, the forest fire area only stood at 200 thousand hectares.
She emphasized that the handling of fires in the savanna is already quite fast even though wildfires may occur again naturally after being extinguished.
"We handle it with integrated prevention such as timely hotspot monitoring, weather modification, patrol and community participation, and of course, law enforcement," she remarked.
Regarding deforestation, she stated that Indonesia had been able to reduce it significantly, namely from 1.09 million hectares in 2014-2015 to 100,000 hectares in 2023.
Apart from that, she also underscored the decline in plastic waste with the implementation of circular economy.
"The amount of marine plastic waste declined significantly from 438 thousand tons in 2018 to 339 thousand tons in 2023. We are trying our best to tackle the issue of plastic waste in the sea. We are also trying to manage it with circular economy," she said.
Earlier, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) ensured that the forest and land fire handling operation in six priority provinces would continue until November 2024 despite weather conditions returning to the La Nina phase.
The six priority provinces are Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, and South Kalimantan.
The BNPB is providing assistance in the six provinces, such as aircraft and helicopters for patrols and waterbombing as well as water pumps for land spraying.
Related news: Forest fire handling operation in six provinces active until Nov: BNPB
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Translator: Lintang Budiyanti, Raka Adji
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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