burning in central kalimantan

BURNING IN CENTRAL KALIMANTAN

By: Dorotea M.G

In Central Kalimantan there are many rain forests, but they are being cut down and burned. Common poor villagers work for land owners, they clear the land mostly to plant palm oil or just clear the land for building.  Burning is very bad for many reasons; it’s bad for health, it contaminates the air and most of all it creates global warming. Although burning is bad and most people including the people who own the land know that, they still do it. Although there are other ways to discard the left over wood, they still just burn it. They burn because the land owners do not want to spend too much money, because it costs a lot more to hire a truck to take all the wood away, and by just burning it, it costs very little to just pay a little money to the workers who cut down the trees to burn it all. These villagers burn although most of them do not want to because they know what it is doing to the world, but they have no choice because that is the only way that they can feed them selves and their families.

Burning does not only affect Central Kalimantan, but it also affects Indonesia and the rest of the world. Nearby countries such as Singapore and Malaysia complained because of the smoke in 2006. The people there had asthmas and trouble breathing, and even some airports were shut down because of such smoke. And all because of Central Kalimantan’s and Indonesia’s burning.

Information from The Burning Season (film) June 2008 Cathy Henkel (Director)