Haze? So what's new
Haze? So what's new
The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore
A twilight grey hung over Singapore island for most of the day
on Wednesday. The sun never showed, despite the thin cloud cover.
Sensitive noses detected an acridity in the air. People with
short memories can get by muttering about those forest fires in
Indonesia -- again.
But those for whom the 1997 occurrence -- the mother of all
haze seasons in Southeast Asia -- was a public-health hazard and
a socio-economic disrupter rolled into one, will be wondering how
bad this episode can become. Television pictures of Kuala
Lumpur's downtown features like the Petronas Twin Towers, poking
ghost-like through the muck, were not reassuring for
Singaporeans.
If the Klang Valley just a gust of wind away could look like
1997 in Singapore, they would reason that things could also get
bad here. The skies were clearer yesterday, but the National
Environment Agency took the precaution of saying a change in wind
direction in the next few days will have Singapore in the path of
smoke from raging forest fires in Sumatra. The haze is no
avenging freak of nature, like cyclones and volcanic eruptions,
but for Singaporeans it is as bad as it can get.
The economic cost of the 1997 pollution to Southeast Asia was
not small. Air traffic disruptions, canceled tourist bookings,
crop damage and loss of manhours through absenteeism and illness
brought losses of US$10 billion. Singapore bore a share of the
losses, not to mention the incidence of respiratory ailments
among older people and young children.
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, 20
million people in the region were exposed to harmful pollutants.
It was estimated that burning underground peat bogs in Indonesia
discharged more carbon dioxide than that emitted by all the power
stations and cars in Western Europe in one year. It is possible
the conclusion here was off, but the empirical picture presented
was consistent with how the world saw Southeast Asia in 1997: The
place was to be avoided.
What is depressing is how little the pathology of the problem
has changed in the intervening years. Indonesia, as the primary
source of forest fires through wanton clearing, did well to
rewrite forestry laws and bring closer coordination between
local-area and provincial authorities with oversight of the
important sector.
The agencies have reported (with figures given) that
plantation companies had been prosecuted for illegal clearing. A
number of them had had their licenses revoked. But contrast this
progress with the annual persistent incidence of forest fires --
like those raging now in Kalimantan and Sumatra -- and a
contradiction cannot be reconciled.
Have a lot more primary forests been parceled out for logging,
thus adding to the dimensions of the activity? If not, weak
enforcement and its corollary, corruption to circumvent the law,
have to be suspected. It is reasonable to ask if the real problem
is a vicious conjoint of liberal forest cutting and non-existent
policing. The Asian Development Bank reported in a 1997 study
that one weakness hampering Indonesian handling of the matter was
a lack of political will.
Asean as a bloc should have better success in combating the
pollution, but the record has been disappointing. Environment
ministers have agreed on a number of action plans to monitor land
clearing and harmonize responses to fires. The latest document
drawn up in 2002 demands that offending countries act quickly so
as to minimize the effects of trans-boundary pollution. But the
haze makes its precise seasonal appearance.