To stop haze, give to nature what we want from it

As the annual ordeal of the haze from Indonesia’s forest fires smothers Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia for the umpteenth time, the same old questions about the root causes of the problem and why lasting solutions have not been found beg to be raised once again.

It seems incredible that a crisis that weighs so heavily on millions of people has remained beyond control for almost twenty years now.

In the past week, a state of emergency has been declared in Riau province, Sumatra where the worst forest fires are reported to be raging.

Flights have been cancelled in Indonesia and Malaysia and a pall hung over the Formula One race in Singapore that was scheduled for the weekend.

Schools have been shut in five Malaysian states, and on Friday, two Royal Malaysian Air Force planes were deployed to Pekanbaru, Riau to evacuate over 170 Malaysians severely affected by the smog.

Indonesia has sent in over 3,000 extra military and police personnel to combat the fires, and on Monday President Joko Widodo instructed the forces to redouble their efforts and to revoke the land permits of companies that were found responsible.

The national police said 133 people were being investigated over the illegal blazes and on Wednesday, it announced the arrests of seven palm oil, pulp and paper plantation executives.

Yet, observers note that few convictions have resulted from such probes in the past.

Although that may sound like a cynical response, the inescapable evidence in the air every year is impossible to deny.

Certainly, the economic and health impacts of the pollution are by no means trifling.

A 2014 report from Greenpeace, Sumatra: Going up in smoke, warned that haze caused by burning peat forests in Indonesia kills an average of 110,000 people per year and up to 300,000 during El Nino events, while releasing hundreds of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The Earth Security Group, which helps financial markets to support zero deforestation through information and analysis, notes that Singapore will increasingly be pressured to reduce air pollution as the health risks posed by the haze undermine the quality of life of its population.

This will also affect its attractiveness as a place to live and work, a separate analysis points out.

But first things first. What has caused these forest fires to become such a huge problem to start with?

The first region-wide outbreak occurred in 1997, in what is still regarded as the most serious episode of haze on record, the Australian media group ABC said in a backgrounder on the topic.

It is noteworthy that the advent of the haze had followed the rapid expansion of plantations in the preceding years, and coincided with an El Nino weather system that made conditions drier than usual in Indonesia. Significantly, many of the region’s most significant palm oil, pulp and paper and timber companies are domiciled or listed in Singapore and Malaysia.

This year, the fires have once again been exacerbated by the effects of the El Nino weather phenomenon as a prolonged dry season in Indonesia has parched the top soil, fuelling the flames.

The illegal fires have increased in number as the plantations expanded, in particular due to rising global demand for palm oil, a key ingredient in everyday goods such as shampoo and biscuits, the ABC report notes.

More than 2,000 fire "hotspots", either areas already on fire or very hot and likely to soon go up in flames, were detected by satellites on Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo on Tuesday.

The scale of the problem shows that a combination of forces must be at play in this apocalyptic calamity.

The central government’s ability to contain the disaster is clearly tested in this situation.

Media reports quote analysts and environmentalists as saying that although land clearing by open burning is punishable by long jail terms and hefty fines, law enforcement is weak and ineffective due to corruption.

Clearly, a key challenge is to institute a regulatory regime that rewards forest conservation at both the ground and national levels.

Corporate citizenship is also being tested to the extreme.

Major companies have "zero burn" policies, meaning they have vowed not to clear land using fires, the ABC report states.

But activists are sceptical that all firms are sticking to their pledges, and small landowners have also been blamed for starting fires to clear land.

Both corporations and small-scale farmers who use the illegal slash-and-burn method to clear vegetation for palm oil, pulp and paper plantations are to blame, it said.

Unfortunately, in the case of the Indonesian haze debacle, intergovernmental mechanisms for resolving transborder issues have not been able to demonstrate practical results.

Indonesia only ratified the Asean Agreement on Trans-boundary Haze Pollution following the 2013/2014 episode of forest fires, although all ten Asean member countries signed the agreement in 2002.

The gap between regulation and enforcement will not be easy to bridge. According to NASA’s Global Forests Watch Fires platform, half of the fire alerts in Riau province are occurring in protected areas or those where new development is prohibited under Indonesia’s national forest moratorium.

Further, the World Resources Institute notes that the greatest concentration of fire alerts are in the Riau province, which also has the highest concentration of land under oil palm cultivation in the country, accounting for 25% of national production.

This only proves that unless the profit maximisation mindset in the plantation sector can be contained within a strong framework of ethical and social responsibility and there is concomitantly, a basic integrity in the regulatory infrastructure from the apex to the ground levels, the callous practice of slash and burn agriculture will continue to haunt the people of Southeast Asia and the world.

However, there can truly be a respite from environmental disasters like the current occurrence of the haze when human activity is guided by a deep sense of understanding that man and nature share an inseparable connection.

So, we should not be surprised that when we treat nature with impunity, it returns the favour by robbing us of the very breath we need for life. – September 19, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.