Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 27 (2006) 67 – 81 © 2006 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd doi:10.1111/j.1467-9493.2006.00240.x fire and policy, eastern IndonesiaLuca Tacconi and Yayat Ruchiat Livelihoods, fire and policy in eastern Indonesia Luca Tacconi 1 and Yayat Ruchiat 2 1 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor Barat, Indonesia and Asia Pacific School of Economics and Government, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia 2 PT Riap Indonesia, Bogor, Indonesia Correspondence: Luca Tacconi (email: luca.tacconi@anu.edu.au) Indonesian legislation calls for a zero-burning policy. This approach to fire management is largely in response to significant negative impacts on the economy and the environment, not only in Indone- sia but also the neighbouring region, that result annually from peat fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra. In this context, the present paper investigates the local use and management of fire in Flores and Sumba islands in eastern Indonesia. Our appraisals show that people’s livelihoods depend on fire to maintain grasslands and, therefore, that the national policy and legislation for zero- burning is inappropriate and needs to be revised. This follows from the fact that not all fires cause damage and are unwanted. Through a series of rapid rural appraisal interviews, we found that the fires in grasslands are often lit intentionally to maintain the grasslands that local people use to sus- tain a variety of livelihood activities such as cattle rearing, hunting and farming. Although fires can damage or destroy remnant dry forests in eastern Indonesia, in order to be effective, future policy formulations need to account for this human livelihood dimension and the geographic variation in fuels, climate and land use. Keywords: livelihoods, fire, grasslands, forest, policy, Indonesia Introduction In 1997–98, a strong El Niño southern oscillation event caused serious forest fires in Papua New Guinea and northern Australia through Indonesia and Malaysia. In Indone- sia, fires throughout the entire archipelago affected some 11.7 million ha of forested and other lands with economic costs estimated to be between USD 5 billion and USD 6.3 bil- lion (Tacconi, 2003). During the height of the fires, the resultant smoke and haze stretched over 1 million km 2 , adversely affecting the health of millions of people in Indonesia and neighbouring countries (Glover & Jessup, 1999) and attracting world- wide attention. This immediate increase in concern resulted in new policy initiatives – such as the 2002 regional Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution – and increased funding for research activities to understand the causes and possible solutions to this recurrent annual problem, although not always occurring with the severity of the 1997–98 fires. Much research has focused on the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan, which have large areas of peat lands (Page et al ., 2002) and important biodiversity values that will be severely affected by large-scale fires. The realization that there was a gap in knowledge about the causes and impacts of fires in the eastern Indonesian islands led to a specially focused workshop (Russell-Smith et al ., 2000) and a follow-up project aimed at investi- gating in detail the causes and impacts of fires in the islands of Flores and Sumba in Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT) Province. This paper, prepared as a contribution to that project (and funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research; ACIAR), 1 assesses fire management issues in those islands with a focus on the implications for policy. We focus on grassland fires as these account for most of the area burned annually in Flores and Sumba according to preliminary interviews conducted with farmers and government officials, and the preliminary findings of remote sensing analysis on the same project.