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South-east Asia faces new smog crisis

Source
The Guardian (UK) - August 2, 1999

John Aglionby, Medan – Dozens of uncontrolled forest fires are breaking out every day across western Indonesia, blanketing much of south-east Asia in a polluted haze and raising fears that there could be a repeat of the smog crisis of two years ago.

In 1997 large parts of the region were blanketed by a choking yellow cloud for up to six months. Losses to affected countries ran into billions of pounds as thousands of working days were lost to sickness caused by pollutants and alarmed tourists stayed away.

It is feared that if the weather stays dry – and no significant rain is forecast for several months in Sumatra, southern Borneo and other affected areas – then the smog could become as bad as that of two years ago.

The official pollution index hit 100 in Singapore on Friday, one point shy of the "unhealthy" level, as a murky smog hung over the city state all weekend.

Primary schools are already planning to move PE lessons indoors if the haze becomes a health hazard and classroom air conditioners have been fitted with filters to block pollutants.

Malaysia stopped publishing pollution levels in June amid fears that media reports would scare away tourists. One Kuala Lumpur resident said yesterday that the smog in the capital was "no worse than at any time in the last month" but there have been reports of haze in other parts of Malaysia. ,p>In West Kalimantan, the Indonesian half of Borneo, government officials have already issued health warnings and are advising people with respiratory problems to wear face masks.

"The situation is not at crisis level yet but we don't know how many fires are burning because the satellites cannot see through the cloud," one environment agency official said yesterday.

Despite little cloud cover yesterday, much of Sumatra was not visible from the air because of the smoke haze. The most recent satellite data for the area shows a rash of hotspots where fires are burning.

"The hotspots have emerged in the last 10 days and we are seeing more and more every day," one satellite data analyst said yesterday.

Environmentalists blame the gathering gloom on the Indonesian government's lack of decisive action in the wake of the 1997 crisis.

Many landowners and farmers use fires as a swift and economical means of land clearance, regardless of its environmental impact.

In the Indonesian provinces of Riau and Jambi, where large areas have been set aside for plantations, the prevailing winds blow the smoke north to Singapore and Malaysia.

The Indonesian government has taken some steps to stop the fires. Most significantly, it has shifted the onus onto those granted forestry concessions to prove their innocence if fires are detected on their land.

Penalties for anyone convicted of starting fires deliberately have also been stiffened but only a handful of minor concession holders have been prosecuted or had their licenses revoked.

According to Longgena Ginting of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, part of the problem is a culture of cronyism at the ministry of forestry.

"The government has done almost nothing about preventing fires," he said. "Their strategy has focused on catching people once the fires have been set alight. "Basically they don't really seem to care and it will only be a matter of time before we have a repeat of 1997."

Mr Ginting said official apathy could be demonstrated by the fact that Indonesia does not even have a ministry of the environment. "Different ministries are responsible for different aspects of exploiting rather than sustaining our natural resources," he said. "It all adds up to almost no serious environmental protection at all."

Meanwhile in northern Sumatra yesterday, the skies were clear but dozens and dozens of fires could be seen. Some were very small, obviously started by individual farmers, while others were larger and clearly designed to clear land on a large scale. Not one firefighter could be seen trying to stop the fires from spreading.

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