(The hotspot in Indonesia is a yearly affair and it somehow the haze had become “tolerable” when by right it should not be the case. The above when Singapore faced the worst from the slash & burn activities in Indonesia. Image source: http://marufish.com)
Read these first
- Haze – The “Real” cause of it
- Unwanted Gift from “Burners”
- “Pak Turuts” reacts to Pak Lah’s act
- When Government think is the best time to reveal the daily API?
At the beginning of last week, this was reported on the state of haze in Malaysia:-
Malaysian authorities declared a state of emergency Sunday in a southern district where a smoky haze blamed on Indonesian forest fires has triggered one of the country’s worst pollution levels in years.
The worst of the smog has shifted from Singapore to southernmost Malaysia, where noxious fumes have drifted across the sea this past week from Indonesia’s Sumatra island. The Malaysian government’s index for air pollution reached a measurement of 746 early Sunday in the southern district of Muar. It was far above the threshold of 300 for hazardous air quality.
Authorities were issuing instructions for Muar’s residents to remain indoors and for schools to close, Environment Minister G. Palanivel said in a statement on his Facebook page. The district has about 250,000 people, several of whom posted photographs on Twitter showing bridges and buildings enveloped in smog that slashed visibility to barely hundreds of meters (feet).
(Source)
And since then, some schools in the Klang Valley were closed for a couple of days (my son certainly was not complaining though) with all of us breathing in and out some of the very unhealthy air to date – some spiked more than 400 on the API reading.
But thanks to (man-made or perhaps God taking pity on some of us) heavy rain last week and recent days, API readings have gone down to less dangerous levels and things seemed to have come down to more normal levels (although last Sunday the haze was back).
But hopefully, despite the clear skies, we will not be forgetting the culprits who caused some of the worse air pollutions over some states in Malaysia last week or keeping our silence on preventing similar occurrence in the coming years.
For start, the Indonesian Government have (once again) blamed (and listed) the “Malaysian” firms involved in the opening burning in Sumatra and on paper, the Malaysian Government have asked for proof and urged prosecution against the wrongdoers but it is a big question on whether the Indonesians would be willing to do that.
We are talking big players here and a very aggressive prosecution on something that could be tough to prove (as to who started the fire) could back-fire big time – big players may pull out and huge investments may drop. Think about it – if they could prosecute the culprits, they would have done so a long time ago and that would have been the end of the yearly man-made deadly haze, right?
Interestingly whilst this is still being debated between the Governments, the Malaysian firms having plantation interests in Indonesia have come out emphasizing on their zero burn policy and flatly denied that they were the culprits behind the massive haze over Malaysia & Singapore – they are putting the blame on the locals who determined to do it the easy way. That sounds reasonable but is it?
The standard response has been to blame local communities and smallholders in Sumatra for the clear-cutting and slash-and-burn tactics. It is easy to blame the small guys/local farmers/local communities, etc when they are unable to respond in the media.
Yet, an overlay map of Sumatra shows that there is a close correlation between the hotspots (where the burning is taking place) and the concession areas for oil palm plantations and timber.
So, the large companies then engage some of these local communities to clear the land for them – sort of like outsourcing the land-clearing. And then these local communities do it in the easiest or cheapest way possible.
Moreover, the local people often do not have the expertise for replanting, which the large companies possess. But because it is the local communities doing the clearing, the large companies are able to wash their hands and pass the buck to the local communities.
(Source)
And it gets worse if these allegations are true:-
The whole world knows, and has for years, that the haze is not just the product of ‘burning-off’ by a ragtag bunch of small farmers, but wholesale illegal clearance of what’s left of Sumatra’s peat forests by the managements of massive palm-oil plantations.
And that many of these environmental vandals are so-called government-linked corporations which the respective ruling regimes involved are coy about naming because they and their cronies are the principal beneficiaries.
(Source)
In the end, it goes back to the issue of enforcement and deploying the best method for clearing the land for plantation.
The issue is serious (at least for me) when you have small kids and old people at home and they start to have breathing difficulties and there is nothing much we could do about it. Mind you, 2 people died from all the haze in Malaysia, courtesy of the idiots in Indonesia taking short cuts to clear the land. One of Indonesian Ministers even had the cheek to say that the Singaporeans are acting childish on this.
Perhaps some of you may not have small kids and old people to take care of but then what about your own health concerns in the long run? How long you think you can survive to wear a mask when you go out? Don’t you get frustrated, angry and sick at the same? What about the negative impact on the country’s economy especially in the tourism sector – how many tourists you think will be willing to take a long stroll outside if the haze is thick and sickening?
In the end, will the slash & burn buggers compensate for these losses – both the economic and personal losses?
(If there is fire and it cannot be done with simple tools, it is time to look at a more powerful one. One such tool would be the fire-fighting aircraft like the one made by Russia above. Image source: http://02varvara.wordpress.com)
The “problem” with the problem is that everyone knows what needs to be done. The mysterious part would be on the Governments with all its might, expertise and willpower seems to be powerless when this happens on a yearly basis and one needs to ask why the might of the law and almost unlimited resources of the Government have not been used to the fullest scale?
Sucking up to the slash & burn offenders does has its limits. Instead of being reactive to the problem, why not be proactive instead? After all, transboundary air pollution is not something one can hide under the blue carpet.
Enforcement aspect aside (it is all talk and no action here for donkey odd years), let’s start with a beef-up the fire services with a specialize team on the forest & peat fires with superior technology (like early warning systems), tools (such fire-fighting planes) and man-power all paid in advance on a yearly basis from a centralised fund (all donated graciously from all plantation owners)?
Why not use the satellite imaginary system to pinpoint the start of the peat and use the information to coordinate fire-fighting and enforcement on a more aggressive manner? It can be done if this needs to be done.
But before that, the Indonesia Government should start with ratifying the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution is an environmental agreement established in 2002 between all ASEAN nations to reduce haze pollution in Southeast Asia. There should not be any more excuses from the Indonesians, now that the source of the haze is clearly is self-made and is in their own back yard.
Time to breathe in and breathe out before the next round of haze is back.