Rains should not dampen SE Asia smog war: Experts

Rains should not dampen SE Asia smog war: Experts

SINGAPORE (Agencies): Southeast Asian environment ministers
should not let the torrential rains sweeping the region dampen
their efforts to tackle the smog caused by forest fires, experts
said yesterday.

"We hope the attention doesn't die away because the fires of
1997 and 1998 have gone out. This should be seen as a long-term,
chronic problem," said Timothy Jessup, senior policy advisor of
the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Indonesia.

Experts said big fires similar to those of last year and early
1998, put out by heavy rains, could strike again.

Already, satellite surveillance is showing hot spots -- local
fires -- on Sumatra, the huge Indonesian island which was the
source of much of the choking smoke that covered a swathe of
Southeast Asia late last year.

Heavy rains have subdued, for the most part, the raging forest
fires in Indonesian Borneo. But in the last few days, new hot
spots and haze have been seen in satellite pictures from central
Sumatra. The haze has drifted over Singapore and more is
expected.

The center of Sumatra island has been getting below normal
levels of rainfall, Woon Shih Lai, director of the Singapore
Meteorological Service, was quoted as saying in yesterday's issue
of The Straits Times.

He said the hot spot pattern was similar to last year, but
without the extra drying effect of the El Nio weather pattern,
there was hope that the fires would go out more quickly.

The region's environment ministers have met several times on
how to prevent a recurrence of fires that caused damage worth
billions of dollars -- along with widespread health problems.

They are due to meet again in Singapore today, early in the
dry season when the danger of fires is greatest with farmers and
plantation companies torching land for new crops.

"Watch out from late July," said Lim Tian Kuay of the
Meteorological Service of Singapore. "Currently it is localized,
controlled," he said.

The fires and smog of 1997, worsened by drought, caused $4.4
billion in damage and wiped out five million hectares of forest,
agricultural land and bush -- equivalent in size to Costa Rica.

Early this year, fires destroyed 500,000 hectares of bush and
forest in East Kalimantan, Indonesia's side of Borneo.

Satellite surveillance is one of the steps the Association of
South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has taken in its fight against
the fires, but experts said follow-up action has been slow.

"In 1997, by the time it was generally acknowledged that this
was a problem... I think the experts agree it was too late,"
WWF's Jessup said.

"And then in '98, you would think that people would have
learned and be ready, but in 1998 there were a lot of fires in
Kalimantan." The comforting news was that the "early detection
was possible", he added.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) is ready to
offer quick assistance should new fires break out in Indonesia,
given the country's appalling financial crisis, said Vladimir
Sakharov, the head of UNEP's humanitarian and environment unit.

Sakharov said donor countries and the UN were urging Indonesia
to change its policies on fires and find different methods of
clearing land for agriculture. But so far he had not seen a
significant change, making it difficult to raise fresh funds.