When I arrived in Southeast Asia, I learnt about a scary natural phenomenon they call ‘haze’. It refers to a fire-related air pollution problem encountered periodically in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and sometimes Thailand and other neighboring countries. The problem has been recorded since 1972 and flares up every dry season. The haze is largely caused by illegal agricultural fires due to slash-and-burn practices in Indonesia, especially on the Sumatra and Borneo islands.
We ‘met’ the haze on our first day in Singapore: the weather was dry, but the sky was particularly ‘milky’ and the visibility very poor – actually the buildings (not too) far away were packed in a kind of fog. First we thought that this was simply the normal weather in Singapore! But soon we learnt about the haze and that it was particularly severe this year due to El Niño, which has caused drier conditions, allowing the fires to spread more. The situation has affected Singapore since early September, prompting the government to issue security warnings, and even close schools or cancel sport events when the pollution levels were too high. Indonesia and Malaysia have been affected even more, with hundreds of thousands of people reporting respiratory illnesses, with daily flight cancellations and with road accidents due to low visibility. Even in countries as far away as Thailand or Vietnam, haze-related problems were reported. Personally, we didn’t experience the haze physically (come on, we spent a week in TEHRAN!!) but we were advised to take this seriously and for example wear a mask once we would cycle up the west coast of Malaysia. In the meantime we are in Malaysia and fortunately the ‘haze situation’ has improved here, thanks to heavy rains from the northeast monsoon. Indeed, in the mornings (when it doesn’t rain), the sky is quite blue but we are hearing from other travelers and locals that the haze-related pollution was very bad throughout the country only a few days ago.
So, I can’t help thinking: “In Indonesia, they are not only continuing to destroy the forest with all the amazing fauna and flora it houses, but more over they are doing so using an illegal burning method, thereby creating fires which get out of control and emit greenhouse gases; those put at risk the health of millions of people in Southeast Asia and are contributing to climate change…!??” WHY CAN’T THIS BE STOPPED?
Well, I’m not an expert but I think it’s fair to say that first the Indonesian government doesn’t do enough to contain or stop the fires, mostly because of lack of financial means. But mainly, they don’t do enough to combat the causes of the fires. These fires are the consequence of the cheap and simple ‘slash and burn’ technique (= cutting and burning plants and trees to create fields). It is actually illegal but the problem is the weak enforcement of environmental laws in Indonesia. So the perpetrators can usually get away with it. Many of these perpetrators are related to the Indonesian palm oil industry, which needs space to create ever more plantations or wants to get rid of trees in old plantations by burning them.
As I said, I’m currently travelling in Malaysia, also a very big producer and exporter of palm oil. Actually, most of the time we are cycling through palm oil plantations. When looking at these trees I think about how sad and lifeless they look compared to the neighboring original forest (at least the little that’s left!)… and I think about the haze… and that I’M GOING TO STOP EATING NUTELLA! But more in a next post.
Farmers on my Road 