ENVIRONMENT: Indonesian Infernos Reduce Malaysians to Prayer

By Baradan Kuppusamy Reprint | | Print |

Baradan Kuppusamy

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 12 2005 (IPS) - As anger mounts among Malaysians choking and spluttering over smoke and haze, from uncontrolled forest fires in Indonesia wafting across the narrow Malacca Straits, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has asked citizens to pray alongside other measures.

”This is my approach,” he told his people over national television as the government declared an emergency in two districts near the capital. ”When such things happen, we must also pray to God to seek help”.

But Badawi’s appeal to providence is a sign of helplessness in Malaysia at what seems to be a perennial manmade environmental problem – fires started mainly by oil palm plantation companies and farms as a cheap way to clear forests to make way for cash crops.

Except that the current one seem to be the worst so far because an estimated 1,000 conflagrations are raging in the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Kalimantan and Riau, with south-westerly monsoon winds transporting the smoke and debris over to Malaysia.

”Fire is the cheapest way to clear the forest, but it seriously damages the environment in the regionàit is a yearly phenomenon that authorities chose to close their eyes to,” Gurmit Singh,executive director of Malaysia’s Centre for Environment, Technology & Development (CETDEM), told IPS.

Singh and other experts are certain that the present fires are worse than the1997-98 haze disaster that caused close to 10 million U.S. dollars worth of damage, going by the thick acrid smoke that now shroud the skies over Malaysia, threatening a public health disaster and mounting economic losses.

As smog blacked out the sun over the capital and most of western Malaysia and the air pollution index hit the 500 mark, considered the hazardous level, the government declared a ‘haze’ emergency in districts outlying the capital.

On Friday, the sun was reduced to a dull orange ball in the sky, hidden by a grayish-white haze, rendering the day dark and surreal and the air difficult to breathe with the smell of burning material present even inside air-conditioned buildings.

”It scalds your throat,” said a commuter, while rushing home with a piece of cloth pressed to her face. Face masks, though ineffective in stopping the pollution from entering the lungs, are hot items and have sold out.

Many people, especially those with respiratory ailments such as bronchitis or asthma, are fleeing affected areas to other parts of the country which are less affected or unaffected by the haze.

All economic activities, except emergency services, have been banned and people have been urged to suspend all outdoor activities, and wear protective masks in areas declared under emergency. Schools and universities in the capital have been closed.

Medical experts say the haze contains gases produced by combustion (sulphur dioxide) and industrial and domestic activity (nitrogen dioxide). But, because of the forest fires, it is also thick with respirable suspended particles – specks of carbon, which can damage the lungs.

Opposition lawmakers are denouncing Jakarta and demanding compensation, while Malaysia’s mainstream newspapers have roundly condemned the ”cavalier” attitude to the problem in Indonesia.

”We have to stop the haze that pollutes our environment to dangerous levels from becoming an annual event,” said parliamentary opposition leader Lim Kit Siang.

”As the source of haze is in Sumatra, we Malaysians are powerless to do anything to fight this threat to our health and safety unless Indonesia is serious about taking action,” he told IPS.

Indonesia has apologised for the pollution, but angry Malaysians reject it as ”insufficient, too little and too late”.

”What is the point of saying sorry if the illegal burning of forests to plant oil palm continues? Instead of any improvement, Malaysians are furious and worried that the threat of haze has increased,” said Lim. ”We want an explanation why the Indonesian government cannot stop the haze from becoming a tragic annual event”.

There is an overwhelming sense of frustration and helplessness among Malaysians as they cope with the haze that the government has warned may last for weeks.

However, Malaysians themselves are not entirely blameless. At least some of the fires were actually started by Malaysian plantation companies opening up forest land for oil palm plantation in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

This was revealed by Indonesia which accused 10 Malaysian companies for starting fires. But it declined to reveal their names.

”We have asked Malaysia to act against these companies,” Indonesian forestry minister Malam Sambat Kaban told Malaysian reporters in Medan, after meeting two Malaysian ministers on a fact-finding mission last week.

Indonesia had also blamed 26 Malaysian companies for the 1997-98 fires that blanketed South-east Asia in thick smoke. Then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad ordered the companies to put out the fires but took no punitive steps. .

One reason why Malaysia’s reluctance to press Indonesia – then and now – is because government investment agencies hold sizeable stakes in Malaysian plantation companies that also operate in Indonesia.

A 2004 European Union-Indonesia forestry department joint report said that these joint-ventures have opened up some 3.6 million hectares of oil palm land in Sumatra since 1999.

Firing the forest is an annual affair between May and August but the intensity of the haze that comes over to Malaysia varies, depending on the weather and the direction of the wind. A prolonged dry spell, like now, worsens the haze.

”Bosses of the Malaysian-owned plantation firms implicated would be hauled up and given a piece of our mind,” said Peter Chin, minister for plantation industries and commodities, responding to the Indonesian accusations.

But few believe this. Unlike mainstream newspapers, news websites and blogs are demanding that Badawi make public the companies fingered by Indonesia and take punitive action against their owners and directors.

Said blog writer C H Goh : ”The culprits are never identified and they continue to operate without fear of reprisal. Millions of Malaysians are suffering in silence and the least we can do is to bring these (Malaysian) culprits to book”.

The lukewarm response to the haze has been attributed to business conglomerates that have formed joint-ventures with political elites in Malaysia and Singapore to develop oil palm plantations in Sumatra and Kalimantan with political clout in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

Any meaningful attempt to overcome this serious and recurring hazard will have to face up to and deal with this powerful regional oil palm cartel, an observer said. Short of that prayer will have to do.