A cloud has fallen over
Southeast Asia both
literally and figuratively.
First came Thailand's
financial collapse, which
has spread like a contagion
to sicken the previously
robust economies of Asean.
Now a noxious cloud of
smoke has billowed out of
Indonesia to enshroud
much of the region under
an eery midday twilight.
While the two problems
appear to be quite different,
many of their root causes
are the same: an
over-emphasis on achieving
rapid economic growth
instead of focusing on
long-term sustainability;
creaky systems of
governance which have
failed to install proper
regulatory regimes; and the
reluctance of the region's
leaders to criticise each
other.
Unfortunately, Asean's
governments still don't
seem to recognise these
problems. Despite an
apology from President
Suharto, some Indonesian
officials are eager to escape
responsibility for their
environmental catastrophe
by trying to pin the blame
on the elements.
The Antara news agency
recently quoted Azwar
Anas, head of the country's
National Disaster
Management Coordinating
Agency as stating, ''We are
not late in anticipating the
problem. It's a natural
disaster which no one could
have prevented."
False. The haze has been a
growing problem for years
now, as plantation firms
and farmers burn off forest
and scrub land before the
start of monsoon rains,
generating a suffocating
smog which has spread to
cover Malaysia and
Singapore. Despite
complaints from its
neighbours, Indonesia has
never seriously attempted
to clamp down on the
politically well-connected
plantation firms, which
under the terms of their
concessions are prohibited
from setting the fires.
This year, an El
Nino-inspired drought has
exacerbated the problem.
The rains have yet to arrive,
and may not come for
months, allowing the
blanket of smog to cover
the entire region, including
Brunei, parts of the
Philippines and southern
Thailand. Even worse, the
fires have spread to
underground peat bogs,
which could slowly burn
and give off smoke for
years to come.
But Indonesia had plenty of
warning. Meteorologists
have known for months that
this year's El Nino would be
a strong one, and that the
drought in Indonesia would
be correspondingly severe.
''The Indonesian
government says they knew
nine months ago there was
a drought coming," notes
Gurmit Singh, a Malaysian
environmentalist. ''If they
knew, then why did they
not take action over the
months to ensure there was
no open burning by
companies clearing land for
plantations? This is blatant
negligence."
Indonesia's Anas, whose
analytical abilities seem to
be roughly on a par with his
ability to manage disasters,
adds that, ''Because [of] El
Nino, all countries in Asia
and the Pacific region feel
obliged to help put out the
fires."
Wrong again. Other
countries in the region are
eager to help out because
they are sick and tired of
inhaling the ''Suharto
smog", as some have taken
to calling it.
The haze has already been
responsible for at least two
deaths in Indonesia, where
more than 35,000 people
have suffered respiratory
problems. In Malaysia,
there are reports that at
least 8,170 people have
been hospitalised, and
another 15,000 being
treated as outpatients as a
result of the haze.
Then there are the indirect
effects: 234 people were
killed in an Indonesian
plane crash thought to
have been caused by
conditions of poor visibility;
28 people are missing after
two ships collided in the
smog-shrouded Straits of
Malacca; and at least 271
people have died in
famine-wracked Irian Jaya
because relief planes have
been unable to reach them.
In the long term, no one
knows what the true costs
of this un-natural disaster
will be. Doctors predict it
will cause higher cancer
rates among the millions of
people who have been
exposed to it. ''Inhaling
pollutants like this is worse
than just smoking, which is
done intermittently," Dr Yeo
Chor Tzin, a respiratory and
lung specialist in Singapore
told Reuter.
The damage to the
environment caused by
turning up to 800,000
hectares of land into ashes
will also be long-lasting.
Many wildlife species in
Borneo and Sumatra will be
directly affected, and those
which survive will see their
food supply disrupted. The
forests which have been
scorched will take decades
to grow back, and much of
the land that has been
cleared for agriculture will
lose its fertility after a
couple of years of planting.
Throw in the huge
economic costs caused by
cancelled flights, disrupted
shipping traffic, school and
office closures, and what
we have on our hands is a
man-made disaster of epic
proportions.
Asean would seem to be
the ideal forum for dealing
with the region's many
environmental problems.
Along with the haze, there
are serious problems
brewing in the region's
seas, where overfishing has
decimated marine stocks,
mangrove forests and coral
reefs are rapidly being
destroyed, and
contamination by mercury
and other toxic pollutants
are a growing threat. But
the grouping has been
stymied by the
short-sightedness and
stinginess of its own
leaders.
In 1995, Asean environment
ministers met and ordered
the Asean Institute of
Forest Management to
draw up an action plan
aimed at preventing the
haze from recurring. The
plan designed to predict,
monitor and fight forest
fires through the use of
satellite technology and
joint fire-fighting strategies
was unveiled last
December in Kuala
Lumpur. The Canadian
International Development
Agency even agreed to
support it with US$1.48
million in funding, so long
as Asean matched the
offer. But Asean has so far
declined to do so.
Meanwhile, as with the
financial crisis, any criticism
or even advice from one
Asean country to another is
muted by the grouping's
policy of ''non-interference".
(Cross-border investment,
of course, is not considered
to be interference; the
Malaysian government has
quietly admitted that 45
Malaysian companies were
partly responsible for some
of the fires set by big
plantation firms.)
In January of this year,
Asean's environment
ministers met in Phuket
and, rather than agreeing
to fund the forest fire action
plan, simply released a
statement which
''expressed their
appreciation [for]
Indonesia's efforts on the
issue of trans-boundary
haze pollution". Phuket,
Thailand's premier tourist
destination, is of course
now engulfed by smog.
Why is Asean so reluctant
to treat this, or any,
environmental crisis as an
international issue? Part of
the answer is that
governments try to protect
their favoured firms from
being held accountable for
pollution. In the case of the
haze, furthermore,
Indonesia as the most
powerful member of Asean
has been able to ignore its
neighbours complaints for
years.
But there is more to it than
that, as became clear at the
recent meeting of
environment ministers in
Jakarta, where Suharto
offered his apology but
hastened to add that, ''quite
often the environmental
issue in addition to
democratic and human
rights issues are wrongly
used as a conditionality in
the international trade by
certain parties".
In other words, Asean has
let its opposition to linking
environmental issues to
trade cloud its judgement
(so to speak) over how to
handle a regional matter.
Citizens of Asean countries
may not realise that the
grouping has adopted a
fiercely anti-green stance
on the world stage, actively
obstructing green
agreements in various
international forums. The
main result of the recent
meeting in Jakarta, for
instance, was a declaration
rejecting a proposal that
developing countries, which
have signed the Climate
Change Convention, report
what they plan to do to help
prevent global warming.
At the World Trade
Organisation (WTO),
meanwhile, Asean
delegates to the committee
on environment and trade
refused to recognise the
use of trade sanctions by
international environmental
agreements. This means
that a country can break its
commitments to a treaty it
has signed, and then try to
escape any trade sanctions
levied as punishment by
appealing to the WTO.
At the Phuket meeting in
January, Asean
environment ministers did
not even seem to be aware
of this threat to their
jurisdiction, no doubt
because it has been
engineered by the
grouping's trade ministers.
Even if Asean's
environment ministers had
mustered the courage to
take action against
Indonesia's forest fires,
there is little they could
have done. Throughout
Southeast Asia, control over
forests and all other
lucrative resources is kept
firmly in the hands of
economic-minded ministries
whose primary aim is to
profit from them.
Environmental agencies are
simply charged with trying
to clean up any mess left
behind.
Consider, for example, the
recent meeting of Asean's
agriculture and forestry
ministers in Bangkok (held
just before the onset of this
year's haze crisis), which
chose to tackle fisheries
issues. Amid much fanfare,
the ministers signed a
memorandum of
understanding (MoU)
urging the protection of the
region's sea turtles
seemingly a laudable
achievement.
But as Thailand's
Agriculture Minister
Chucheep Harnsawat
admitted, the MoU
contained no concrete
measures. Plodprasop
Suraswadi, the former head
of Thailand's Fisheries
Department, argued that by
formally recognising sea
turtle conservation as a
regional issue, countries
would come under pressure
to protect the creatures.
The smog crisis, however,
has shown just how
worthless such ''peer
pressure" is.
The MoU was actually
signed in response to trade
sanctions imposed last year
by the US, which charged
that shrimping fleets from
Asean (and other
developing) countries were
slaughtering sea turtles.
The agriculture ministers
demonstrated their real
concerns at the meeting by
setting up a Shrimp
Industry Task Force
designed to do battle
against foreign
environmentalists, who
forced the US to impose the
embargo and are now
stepping up their campaign
against shrimp farms.
What Asean needs are
legally binding
environmental agreements
with teeth, including
economic penalties for
countries which break the
rules. (Thailand briefly
considered suing Indonesia
for the damage caused by
the haze, but rather
predictably backed down.)
If the region can agree on
setting up a free trade area
with common tariffs, it
should be able to agree on
common environmental
standards.
Some optimists see the
current smog crisis as a
turning point. Asean's
leaders, they hope, will look
at the apocalyptic cloud
spreading over their region
and come to their
environmental senses.
But like governments
everywhere, those in
Southeast Asia will only
turn green if they are forced
to do so by their people.
Until that happens, Asean
will remain a dirty word.