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.