FOREST fires raging across Indonesian Borneo and its neighbour Sumatra are threatening to intensify toxic smog and pollution hanging over South-East Asia, which the United Nations identified this week as one of the world鈥檚 most pernicious environmental hazards. The pollution kills hundreds of thousands of people every year, and is disrupting the region鈥檚 climate, says the UN.
The fires have been spreading since mid-July. Researchers in the area now fear they could spark a repeat of the pollution crisis in 1997, when a thick, choking smog spread over neighbouring countries. Then, as now, fires were sparked by plantation companies setting alight tinder-dry forest during a drought triggered by the 1997-98 El Ni帽o.
Agronomist Suwido Limin at the University of Palangka Raya, the capital of Central Kalimantan province of Indonesian Borneo, says he has halted teaching and research in a last-ditch attempt to control the fires. He and his students are desperately trying to create fire breaks by digging deep wells, hoping to tap groundwater that could dampen the dry, peaty soil and make it less flammable.
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Limin says the Indonesian government is failing to support his efforts, and he is appealing to the international community for emergency funds to help control the fires. 鈥淢illions of dollars have been spent investigating the fires of 1997 and the damage they did,鈥� says Jack Rieley of Nottingham University, who is researching the peat bogs of Kalimantan. 鈥淏ut no one is putting any dollars into tackling the causes of these fires and fighting them when they occur.鈥� Palangka Raya is already full of smoke and airports are being closed, says Limin. 鈥淭he conditions are terrible and many children will become ill.鈥�
Such fires contribute to a continent-wide pollution that a report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says is making millions of people ill with respiratory diseases, and causing hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year.
Smoke from forest fires combines with that spilling out from millions of small, inefficient cookers burning wood, cow dung and other natural fuels, says UNEP. At certain times of year, say scientists from the US, India and Germany, this combines with emissions from vehicles, factories and power stations to form clouds of pollution that can affect many million square kilometres of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Burma and south-east China.
鈥淭hese initial findings clearly indicate that this growing cocktail of soot, particles, aerosols and other pollutants is becoming a major environmental hazard for Asia,鈥� says Klaus T枚pfer, UNEP鈥檚 executive director.
Some 60 per cent of the world鈥檚 6 billion people live in Asia, and the population is growing rapidly. Yet the World Health Organization safety limits for air pollution are exceeded in all 23 Indian cities with more than a million inhabitants.
A. P. Mitra, one of the report鈥檚 main authors from the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi, says that the brown cloud is also cutting the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth鈥檚 surface. This could reduce evaporation and lead to a decline in rainfall, threatening scarce water supplies.
Agriculture is likely to suffer, too. Already there is evidence from India that the loss of sunlight may be cutting winter rice harvests by as much as 10 per cent. 鈥淭he report is a warning,鈥� Mitra told 快猫短视频. 鈥淚t鈥檚 time to take action.鈥�
The Indonesian forest fires, and the scale of the continent鈥檚 wider pollution problem, highlights the dilemma facing the 170 countries gathering at the World Summit in Johannesburg next week: how to achieve economic growth without sacrificing the health of the planet.
Even if they agree on some future economic miracle, forest fires in the region will still have a massive impact. Some 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon were released from peat bogs burning in Borneo during the blazes of 1997, says Limin. That鈥檚 equivalent to almost a third of the global emissions that year from fossil-fuel burning.
