Haze

Our neighbors Singapore and Malaysia are also distressed because of the smoke coming from Kalimantan and Sumatra. The Singaporean government has even set up a task force in anticipation of a worsening of the situation.

Malaysia, blaming the forest fires in Indonesia to bad management, has also complained. They are now preparing to offer assistance to help Indonesia put out the fires and exercise better management over its forests.

This year's forest fires are said to be the biggest in the past ten years. In South Sumatra alone, according to a forestry expert of Gajah Mada University as reported by Antara, 263 forest fires have so far occurred this year, devastating 5.7 million hectares of forest.

Putting out the forest fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra is indeed an urgent business. However, preventing them from occurring again in the future is of no less importance.

In the final analysis, forest fires concern not merely natural conditions or dry season. They possess other dimensions as well that are even more complex and range from health issues to social problems and even international relations. Without systematic and concerted efforts to overcome the problem at present, those dimensions will in the future become even more complex and intricate.

-- Republika, Jakarta