Smog in Singapore

Every year there is a smog season.  It usually occurs in June and July.  The cause is always the same : land clearance in Indonesia.  

The cheapest, if not the most efficient, way to dispose of tired palm oil trees is to set a fire and let them burn.  When the palm oil price is low, as it is now, the temptation to take this short cut is all the stronger.  The economies are clearly tilted in favour of slash and burn rather than carefully removing poor producing plants and processing the detritus.  These trees give off smoke.  Some land is peat like.  The combination can be toxic.  Once the land is smouldering the fumes can last for days, even weeks; and the smoke contains nasty residue that can damage lungs, especially those of young children. 

Villagers and small scale local farmers get the blame; but large companies listed on stock exchanges across the region have plenty of cover if they choose to take out old trees this way.  It is hard to prove who started a fire.  The Indonesian government demonstrates its incompetence each year; and even if the central government has good intentions local officials either do not care, or all too often are given inducements to look the other way.  Since the prevailing winds tend to take the worst of the smoke to Singapore and Johor, rather than Jakarta, this is not so difficult.  Finger pointing at someone else is the easy response as no-one seems to want to admit responsibility.  

Of course Indonesia is a poor country but offers of intervention and assistance from Singapore are routinely rejected.  Sovereignty is cited as one reason, but I suspect the main reason is that clean and competent Singapore firefighters might discover what is really going on; and pinpoint the culprits – some of whom almost certainly live in Singapore so could be prosecuted.  Cash is changing hands but investigative reporting is counter cultural and environmental NGOs who on this occasion might be able to make an useful contribution seem unable to get to the bottom of the scandal and present conclusive evidence to the authorities.  All they have been able to accomplish so far is to persuade many Western investors to boycott companies in this business; and this is a blanket ban regardless of whether the company has good sustainable farming practices or is one of the bad guys.

So we all suffer.  Strangely we are suffering now in September when in most years the skies should be clear as the annual damage has been done.  Checking with several sources - including my team in Jakarta - it seems that this year the fires really might be natural.  There has been insufficient rain.  El Nino is to be blamed.  Spontaneous combustion can happen.  Many areas are much drier than usual.  Not all the fires are in plantation areas due for renewal.       

That last point is the most powerful, but does not make conditions here any better.  Several days last week the PSI went well over 100.  That is the threshold for unhealthy.  Masks have reappeared.  The view from my office is shrouded in haze.  The sun struggles to break through.  We know it is up there; but it is totally obscured by smog.  Yesterday it got up to 160.  200 is the cut off point for very unhealthy.  We have flirted with that level.  

Conditions are not as bad as they were a couple of years ago when at its peak the index exceeded 400 and schools had to close.  300 by the way is classified as hazardous.  This is London back in the 1930s, but caused by palm oil rather than coal burning.  

The Indonesian government appears powerless if not indifferent.  There is not much love lost between the two countries.  I have observed that when things get really bad in Malaysia, Indonesian officials take somewhat more notice of those protests and a little more effort is made to reduce the problem.  So here we are hoping the wind will change and take the worst of it over to Malaysia as that should stimulate some action on the ground in Kalimantan and Sumatra; or praying for rain : a lot of it.  We shall know soon if seeding really works.  There is rain today here, but will it fall where it is needed most and will there be enough of it?  Sadly there is not yet enough evidence of that.