Southeast Asia's transboundary haze problem | CNA Explains

your throat gets irritated. I'm talking about the annual haze season in Southeast Asia

Widespread forest fires in Indonesia create transboundary haze. It spreads to its neighbours like Malaysia,

and sometimes forcing school closures when it gets bad. Air quality gets into the unhealthy range as well

Here's the burning question: Why does this keep happening? Why is it so hard to stop?

Indonesia is the world's greatest palm oil producer. Almost every dry season,

farmers slash and burn large swaths of forest to make way for palm oil and pulp and paper plantations

Under Indonesian law, small-scale farmers are allowed to burn land as long as it occurs on a maximum area

of 2 hectares and necessary prevention measures are in place. The slash-and-burn technique is seen

as a cheaper means to clearing land

It costs more money to clear land by mechanical means

Kerosene, matchsticks (are) much cheaper, and the cost that you and I suffer are what they call externalised

They go to other people.

The second factor is that a lot of the smallholders technically do not have

a legal title to their land they're clearing

So they tend to do it fast and quickly

And it's not just small-scale farmers at work. Many of these fires are started by big palm oil corporations too

But why is it so difficult to police them?

The local authorities are supposed to be in charge, but they

have difficulty and capacity problems enforcing. From Jakarta, they can investigate but they will

have to increasingly use satellite imaging and data sensing, which they're doing

In the last few weeks, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry has announced they're going after 11 quite big

companies in South Sumatra and other parts of Indonesia in Kalimantan

They're going after about 200-something companies,

and this list could go on. It is difficult though to prove the case and then

to punish them enough

But beyond man-made reasons, the changing weather patterns play a role too

The problem is that the fires run out of control when there are dry conditions, and this year we're

seeing the return of a dry weather phenomena called El Niño, and it's being exacerbated, made worse,

by another phenomena called the Indian Ocean Dipole

And so, an innocent small fire can

suddenly turn into a much larger fire and this is doubly so for climate change

So, where are these hotspots?

Almost 3,000 hotspots were detected in Indonesia in mid-September 2023

Sumatra and Kalimantan accounted for two-thirds Pollutants in haze can lead to significant long-term health

issues such as respiratory ailments. And here's a reminder that the people closest to the source

of the haze suffer the most

In August 2023, the South Sumatra health agency reported an increase

of 4,000 cases of respiratory ailments up from July. And in South Kalimantan, more than 189,000 residents

had respiratory ailments. The choking smoke affects more than just our health