Government prepares grand design to prevent forest fire

The government has prepared a grand design to prevent land, forest, and plantation fires, which would summarize facts, images, the cause of the fires, and solution for the disaster.

"The grand design would focus on (prevention) activities and monitoring conducted by both the government and private sectors from 2017 to 2019," Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Darmin Nasution said here on Tuesday.

The grand design is formulated by the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs, Ministry of Environment, and Ministry of National Development Planning.

According to Nasution, the government has also prepared various financial instruments that would support the funding for forest fire prevention at village level.

"The financial instruments are needed to facilitate access to funding resources related to climate change," he noted.

Meanwhile, Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya remarked that the grand design would stress on five key strategies to prevent land, forest, and plantation fires.

The five strategies are regulation on economic incentive and disincentive, reinforcement of villagers` role and social institutions, law enforcement, synchronization of law and licensing, infrastructure development, and reinforcement of early fire response.

Previously, head of National Development Planning Agency, Bambang Brodjonegoro, pointed out that the fires have caused at least Rp221 trillion in loss for the country in 2015 from flights cancellation, closure of offices, and other economic activities, which makes preventing fires more crucial than putting them out

Source: ANTARA