Straits Times 5 Aug 08;
LAST year Singapore got off with a moderate case of the haze, although a richness of hot spots in Sumatra and Kalimantan promised worse. But 2006 was bad. The gold-medal year remains 1997, when even fit and healthy Singaporeans were forced indoors for fear of respiratory damage. For weeks that year, the greyish muck accompanied by an acrid miasma hung over the island like an ancient curse.
There was a decent stretch of relatively haze-free years after that, which encouraged the foolish thought that forestry companies and corrupt officials overseeing enforcement of environmental laws in Indonesia were at least being mindful of the neighbouring countries' censure.
Singaporeans should have known better.
What has accounted for the discordance between haze thickness and hot spot activity is wind direction, always blithely capricious. It has little to do with the Indonesian authorities gradually gaining control of the situation, for they are themselves prey to administrative inertia and the contempt the powerful agri-sector has for officialdom. Laws? These are essentially for window-dressing to show complainants - who include Indonesians suffering from the air pollution - that action is being taken to overcome the health threat. Singaporeans have in recent weeks been forewarned by their own officials that hot spots lighting up again in Riau, Kalimantan and Sumatra - the result of wanton forest clearing before the rains come - could bring the haze back. The skies here have been clear although Indonesian officials and the Jakarta environmental lobby have been giving out warnings since May that the burning season is approaching its climax. So far, wind shifts have carried the pollution away from the island. The winds could as well blow full-blast Singapore's way - and then what? The 1997 record will not stand for all time. This is no way to live.
Neighbourliness requires that Singapore, along with Malaysia, Brunei and Thailand, continue to keep faith with the Indonesian government in its efforts at managing the problem. But they conceivably could cut the Gordian knot by considering two possibilities. One is to push for the development of a mechanism within the legal framework of United Nations climate-change protocols to force compliance. Carbon emissions from questionable forestry activity are no different from pollution from vehicles and factories. They impose a liveability tax on future generations. Another approach is more drastic: Reduce purchases of Indonesian lumber and other forestry products. A consumer rearguard action has drawbacks, not least because it runs counter to the spirit of Asean economic cooperation. We know it's too radical and impractical but, alas, nothing else seems to have worked.
