The Indonesian Haze Conundrum
HAZE POLLUTION CAUSES ENVIRONMENTAL AND HEALTH PROBLEMS.
Haze pollution has become an inevitable environmental hazard in Southeast Asia. For a start, exposure to it over a protracted period can bring over irritation to one’s eyes and throat if proper protection is not applied. Further complications may develop depending on the constitution of the afflicted. Haze may simply be defined as dry particles such as dust and smoke swirling and lingering in the air that negatively affect the atmospheric quality and the visibility of the sky, but it greatly disrupts the normal lives of people who take the full brunt of its continual occurrence.
HAZE POLLUTION ORIGINATES FROM THE BURNING FORESTS IN INDONESIA.
When Indonesia first began to clear its innumerable forests on a commercial scale to turn them into profitable palm-oil plantations, haze has recurred almost annually in Southeast Asia. This has been the case since the mid- eighties . The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to apply the slash and burn method. thereby producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that is carried by the seasonal monsoon. This then smothers hundreds, or even thousands, of square kilometres, severely affecting not only Indonesia’s own territorial lands but also its close neighbours such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
HAZE POLLUTION CAUSES DIPLOMATIC TENSION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA.
The intervening decades have seen the passage of numerous national and international regulations made in attempts to stop the fires, but all, it seems, to no avail. The mid weeks of June 2013 witnessed some of the worst haze situations ever, taking a severe toll not only on peoples’ lungs, throats and tempers, but also on diplomatic relations and Indonesia’s attempts to do damage control over its tarnished environmental image. Worse still, despite the outcry, , it is difficult to see how matters are going to change for the better over the next few years.
The fires in the provinces of Riau, West Kalimantan, Jambi, Central Kalimantan and Sumatra in Indonesia seriously affect the regional air quality. Most of these forest fires appear to be commercially driven. In the recent massive forest fires in Sumatra, large-scale oil palm plantation companies were being investigated for allowing the situation to get out of control. However, the lack of political resolve and the failure of the local authorities to enforce the legislation allow the culprits to escape unscathed time and again. Even recent efforts by the Indonesian authorities to pin down corporate perpetrators of the burning hotspots have failed to come up with any suspects and so no books can been thrown at anybody in particular in a court of law at all.
While the culprits remain elusive, land clearing for commercial farming and industrial purposes remains the prevalent practice. The “slash and burn technique” where forests are burnt on purpose to clear the land is considered as the most efficient and economical method. However, such practices often induce forest fires, especially during the dry season.
Peat fires have long been singled out by environmentalists as the key contributor to the Indonesian haze conundrum. A non-renewable fossil fuel, peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation particularly in wetlands. Such fires have also been spotlighted as the country’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in 2005. This means that greenhouse gas emissions from peat fires were larger than those from other energy sources in the country.
This most recent episode is not the first haze-related pollution which has reached an epidemic proportion. Back in 1997-8, Indonesia’s carbon emissions were high enough for it to be blacklisted by environmentalists as one of the largest global polluters. Indonesia was then compelled to pledge its commitments to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by 2020 and 41 percent by 2050. More than half of these reductions are targeted towards forestry and peat land sectors.
The 1997 haze pollution crisis began when forest fires broke out sporadically in Kalimantan and Sumatra in July that year, worsened in September and October before subsiding in November. The severely afflicted countries included Thailand in the north and all the way to Australia in the south. The hotspots, burning at hazardous levels were reported to be about four million football pitches in magnitude and were visible even from space. Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad, the then Malaysian Prime Minister, had to declare a State of Emergency when approximately 10,000 people were reported to have sought treatment for haze-related ailments within a short span of six days. Malaysian and Singapore fire-fighters joined forces under a cross-border firefighting mission called Operation Haze to finally reduce Indonesia’s forest fires to a sizzle. A wasteful and costly affair causing massive environmental damage, with close to ten million hectares of forest engulfed by the raging fire, the lives of more than 40 thousand Indonesian people were irreversibly disrupted.
Despite facing immense international and regional pressure, the Indonesian government continually faces an uphill task trying to enforce legal restrictions to curb land clearing through burning. It is a difficult task partly because of the diffused responsibility across different levels of the government and the judiciary, as well as the challenges faced by governmental investigators in assembling sufficient evidence against the accused.
In 2002, ASEAN established an environmental agreement to reduce haze pollution in the region. The Agreement on Trans-boundary Haze Pollution
aims to prevent and monitor trans-boundary haze pollution as a result of land and/or forest fires, which should be mitigated through concerted national efforts and intensified regional international cooperation. To date, all ASEAN countries except Indonesia have ratified the agreement.
Aside from strictly implementing government laws and ratifying the ASEAN agreement, Indonesia could initiate peat land rehabilitation, which would automatically prevent fires in these areas. They could also direct large-scale developments requiring land use to already deforested or degraded areas. Singapore and Malaysia could also help the Indonesian government to ensure that the plantation companies headquartered in their respective territories employ contractors that observe the “zero burn” policy.
Members of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) should also take a stronger position against further burning of peat land to emphasise their commitment to fulfil the zero net deforestation by 2020. Banks and international finance institutions could also ensure that the companies they lend money to have a sustainable environmental framework as part of their operational plan. Consumers should also demand that their palm oil and paper products not be grown in peat land areas.
What is needed is a Global effort. The rest of the world could also do more by supporting international initiatives such as the United Nations’ REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), which aims to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests. This then offers incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development.