As Indonesia battles the worst wildfires since 2015, tens of thousands of people in its provinces have been sickened by toxic air. Flaming forests and the public-health emergency have renewed attention on a persistent problem with a global reach: slash-and-burn farming.
Each summer brings noxious clouds of smoke to Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo as fields are set ablaze to make way for the new planting season. Some years, like this one, high winds nudge the flames beyond the boundaries of the plantations, through parts of adjoining rainforests. The burning produces thick, hazardous smoke that spreads across the region. The dry season this year lasted longer than usual, contributing to the scale of the fires.
Authorities in Indonesia have identified 16 national and international corporations and at least 323 individuals suspected of starting this year’s fires to clear their land for a new round of crops, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Police have launched extensive investigations and sent at least two dozen cases to prosecutors so far, a police spokesman said. The fires are the most destructive since 2015, when large parts of the country were scorched and neighboring states blanketed with sickening smog.
Researchers found that breathing in toxic haze caused by the fires in 2015 led to about 100,000 premature deaths across Southeast Asia.
After that, President Joko Widodo was forced to make changes. He took steps to enforce a freeze on converting forest land into farmland and set up an agency to revitalize 8,000 square miles of degraded forests by 2020. Environmentalists say the measures have had some effect but don’t address one of the biggest problems: preventing the blazes on existing fields.
“The companies need to be punished, and the punishment needs to be tough,” said Yuyun Harmono, an environmentalist at Walhi, a Jakarta-based nongovernmental organization. “We propose that the government revoke their permits, make them pay.”
Indonesia isn’t alone in the struggle. From the Brazilian Amazon to the East African nation of Madagascar, fires set deliberately to clear land emit large volumes of greenhouse gases each year and spark health emergencies. The problem has only intensified as more land has come under cultivation to feed growing populations and meet the global demand for palm oil and crops such as soybeans.
It especially haunts developing countries, where farmers often don’t have or can’t afford the machinery they need to clear farms. Where soil conditions are poor and fertilizers are expensive, burning is seen as a cheap way for locals to add nutrients to their land. The practice is so widespread that governments don’t have the capacity to detect and crack down on the burning.
In Indonesia, clearing land with fire is illegal. But every summer, thousands of fires are set on small farms and commercial plantations, including those growing oil palm, a key ingredient in consumer products such as shampoos and cosmetics. Farmlands have expanded rapidly to produce more for export world-wide.
Dr. Michael Brady, a fire scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor, Indonesia, said the country has struggled to police the farms, in part because a vast amount of land is under cultivation and some of it is in remote forest-agricultural areas.
“There is no grand solution,” Dr. Brady said. “It’s going to require a lot of attention and investment.”
Scientists also worry that climate change could exacerbate the problem. Warmer oceans could cause longer and more erratic El Niño weather patterns, which occur when sea-surface temperatures rise to above-normal levels for long periods, affecting winds and temperatures. This summer, warmer and drier weather has left peat fields to smolder for weeks. Toxic haze spread to neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, where air pollution reached unhealthy levels.
Medical responders in Indonesia say they are trying to contain a public-health crisis. Tens of thousands of people have been diagnosed this year with respiratory illnesses across the six Indonesian provinces closest to the flames, according to the Health Ministry. A state of emergency was declared this summer in Riau, a province of central Sumatra.
In the neighboring province of Jambi, pollutant particles made the sky appear blood red, as if it were ablaze. To Mr. Harmono of the Walhi NGO, that was a sign his country was crossing an environmental red line.
The government and nonprofits have set up what are known as safe houses where people can breathe from a tank for about 10 minutes before returning to the noxious air. Residents said this year was especially bad, but that they breathe tainted air every year, leading to burning eyes, constricted breath and flulike illnesses that can take six months to fully disappear.
“It’s very difficult to breathe,” said Desri Arwen, a 45-year-old resident of Jambi. “Most people here have a problem.”
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