Over the last few days a horrible haze has settled over most of Malaysia and Singapore. While this is an annual occurrence, I am reminded of how unprecedented the scale of the smog is this year. The culprit for this crime is well known, our friendly, agriculture loving neighbour, Indonesia. Every year, the news reports of increased forest fires caused by farmers and palm oil plantation owners who burn large areas of the forest to make room for cultivating next years crops. Surprisingly, this is easier and cheaper than chopping down the trees. I still find that fact insane to comprehend no matter how many times I hear it.
In any case, the forest fires create the smog that conveniently drifts towards the Malaysian peninsula instead of lingering where the blame lies. As a result, every year around this time, the weather forecast becomes gloomy with hazard warnings of air pollution and advice to stay indoors. Last year, around this time, while there was definitely some haze, it was not as bad as this. On Sunday morning, I awoke to find that I couldn’t see my neighbouring tower block for all the haze in the air. This truly shocked me, as I couldn’t recall it ever being this bad before.
It seems that the smog is here to stay for a while longer, as it has not rained here in a good few days. As for some sort of contingency plan with regards to further fires and additional smog, there doesn’t seem to be any hope. Today, the BBC was reporting that Malaysia issued a National Emergency on the matter, and Singapore (who I should admit, is having the worst of it) is proposing to aid Indonesia in their efforts to stop the fires. However, Indonesia continues to play down the role it has had in this problem. Indonesia’s blatant disregard for their actions strike me as shockingly unjust. Their reasoning is that many of the palm oil plantations who are burning the forest, belong to Malaysia or Singapore. This may be a valid point, in which case, I for one would not protest against fines and sanctions against these parties, but to deny all responsibility is itself rather childish. Furthermore, one would think that if this is an ongoing issue that happens every year, there would be a standby solution in place to prevent extreme cases like this from occurring. I mean, it is only the logical course of action to a constant and ongoing problem – find a solution.
This post has turned into a bit of a rant, which I really didn’t mean for. That said, tomorrow will be the first day of my life where I will be wearing a face mask while going to work. This seems insane, and yet is only a prudent choice, considering conditions here. I only hope that it rains here soon, as I have lost all hope in the local governments to remedy a solution to this problem.
