Haze? So what's new?: It's the same old story

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.