On The Radar: Southeast Asia’s haze problem
21 September 2022
Every dry season, a dangerous smog drifts over parts of Southeast Asia.
Known as "the haze", it’s mostly driven by fires in Indonesia, namely on the huge islands of Sumatra and Borneo, and carries with it health hazards – and 2022’s haze is shaping up to be a rough one after a couple of quiet years.
Most of the fires that cause the haze are blazes deliberately (and illegally) set to clear rural land, often to make space for palm oil plantations. On top of this, the land that’s easiest to burn during the dry season is peatland, which comes with its own hazards.
Peat (a dense mix of dead vegetation and organic material) contains large amounts of carbon and methane.
When it’s burnt, the smoke and pollutants drift great distances, often reaching Singapore, Malaysia, and sometimes going as far as Thailand.
The haze is dangerous too - if it’s a bad fire season, it can become an urgent public health crisis. The main pollutant from the haze is PM2.5, a fine particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or shorter, which is carcinogenic and can cause respiratory illnesses.
In 2015, Southeast Asia faced one of its worst years of haze – the El Nino weather pattern caused drier conditions than normal, raising the fire risk. More than 2.6 million hectares of land was burned in Indonesia that year, and the haze spread across six of the 10 ASEA nations, hitting Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia particularly hard.
It affected everything from tourism to education, as people were encouraged to stay inside during its peaks. Sports events were cancelled, transport was disrupted, and more than 140,000 people reported respiratory infections during the smog.
Over the Covid pandemic, between milder dry seasons and reduced activity, the haze has been relatively mild. But 2022 is seeing a return to pre-pandemic levels of activity, especially as more land is being cleared to meet global rising demand for palm oil.
Rising prices for oil are making many farmers in Indonesia look again at forested land that could potentially be brought into palm oil production, with fire used as the most effective way to clear forest and scrubland.
Researchers in Singapore are hopeful haze levels won't reach the dangerous levels of 1997-8 and 2015. With this year's weather pattern expected to remain in a La Nina mode, the coming weeks are expected to be wetter than normal in the region
ASEAN governments have been making efforts to address the annual haze and its hazards. In 2002, ASEAN developed the legally binding Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution to reduce pollution. But the agreement’s impact has been criticised for its lack of clarity and coordination – Indonesia, the main source of the haze, notably only ratified the agreement in 2014.
Given the growing climate crisis, experts are predicting the haze will get worse in coming years and are urging for more impactful action now.
- Asia Media Centre
