Hazy times, fuzzy will

IT’S that time of year again, when haze once again envelops Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Schools had to declare emergency holidays as particulate levels in the air reached new heights, giving rise to concerns that young children’s health may be seriously affected if they are exposed to hazy air for prolonged periods. We adults, on the other hand, would often still have to work in this choking environment, making do with wearing masks that I frankly suspect are of

away those micro-particles in the air that apparently would lodge in our tissues once breathed in. Those with existing respiratory problems would probably suffer most, while deleterious respiratory syndromes are being “forced out” of otherwise healthy people. The hazy situation is bad. Very bad. Worse than ever.

And the blame game over the haze recurred, too. Satellite photos clearly showed all the thermal hot spots to be on Indonesian terri

of Sumatra and Kalimantan (the southern half of Borneo). But this is perhaps not proof incontrovertible enough for at least one Indonesian

- nounced that the haze was blown over from Malaysia! Fortunately, the famously hands-on and downto-earth recently reelected president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, had more common sense and candor,

was caused by the slashing and burning of jungles in Indonesia.

too complacent to put in adequate prevention measures against the haze menace this year, after having in their view “resolved” the perennial problem a few years ago. Jokowi, as the president is affectionately known, even deigned to go to some of the worst burning sites to assess the extent of the burning

Indonesians need and truly deserve. If only his pragmatic mindset and governance practices could permeate down the ranks of Indonesia’s at least this sort of recurring environmental scourge could be viewed seriously and not brushed aside.

And the thick haze caused by burning will only compound for Indonesia, much as it did for Malaysian and Singaporean metropolitan areas, as Jokowi coincidentally announced a few weeks earlier that Indonesia will move its administrative capital away from

other overpopulation concerns, to a new territory in eastern Kalimantan, where some of the most avid burnings are taking place. Imagine a few years from now, many Indonesian civil servants and politicians, including perhaps the aforementioned logic-defying minister, longing to henceforth work in custom-designed, state-of-the-art facilities in the new capital, only to be welcomed not long after they set foot in the new capital by a thick layer of haze! Only a livable capital with clean and not hazy air can showcase Indonesia’s commitment to environmental preservation.

And the blame game continues as both domestic and foreign plantation companies are implicated by the Indonesian authorities as the culprits. There are also those who place the blame on the smallholders or practitioners of shifting cultivation for the burnings. Perhaps only a neutral, professional international assessment team can give us the real answer. But in any case, the Indonesian authorities must tackle their crippling corruption problem, so that serious and not perfunctory enforcement of environmental preservation laws could be duly enforced. Indonesia is a sprawling large country, but it must formally acknowledge trans-border environmental degradation such as propagation of haze caused by indiscriminate burning of jungles to be a form of non-traditional security threat, and devote adequate resources to

alternatives to slash- and- burn agriculture, which some say is the

of clearing land for cultivation of crops of both food and cash types.

Speaking of shifting capital, there are those in my home state of Sabah who wish that the move of the Indonesian capital would not only spur growth in Kalimantan, but its effect could actually “spill over” to Sabah. For me at least, it is very curious that we would have to in a sense look forward to “hitch on” the ancillary effects of other neighbors in the region seemingly without much effort expended by ourselves, instead of devising our own path to prosperity, perhaps in responsible and sensible collaboration with these same neighbors, including Indonesia. But perhaps more pertinently, the current haze problem lays bare both the inadequacy of those directly involved and the futility of those who think they can depend on those who can barely help themselves. We must be clear-eyed, even in these hazy conditions, that invertebrate land speculation aside, the convergence of many public sector employees and not private sector entrepreneurs in a new metropolis and surrounding areas is probably nice, but it would be farfetched to expect that to miraculously lift the economy or even livelihood of

examples in capital-shifting, such as that from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília, did not demonstrate such uplifting effect. In fact, despite Brasilia’s relatively interior location, the Amazon forests nearby are also burning heavily at the moment, and the nationalistic government of Brazil has been refusing foreign voluntary assistance in

countries to consider boycotting Brazilian products in the face of blatant dereliction of environmental preservation duty for the

the insipid interest of sovereignty.

In trying to address the “seasonal” haze attacks, all parties should

in a futile attempt to shift blame. Instead, we must be pragmatic and brave enough to confront it as a common reality that affects all our lives, for we all breathe in the same polluted air that is slowly killing us. Serious studies need to be conducted on diversifying the agricultural practices in the hotspot areas. Law enforcement must be beefed up with a resolve to root out the corruption that is literally destroying our lives. Until such time when such collective will to action comes to fruition, we are likely to be mired in hazy weather time and again, with no end in sight.