Will the Smoke Wake up Southeast Asia?
10/2/97
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Headline: Will the Smoke Wake up Southeast Asia?
Source: The McGraw-Hill Companies
Date: 10/2/97
Author: Michael Shari
Copyright 1997, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc
For years, environmentalists have pleaded with governments in
Southeast Asia to save the region's vast rain forests.
Officials responded that if wealthy western nations were so
concerned, they should foot the cleanup bill. They also
downplayed the damage loggers and planters caused by lighting
fires every dry season to clear land on Sumatra and Borneo.
The consequent smog dissipated quickly enough for Indonesia
and its neighbors to ignore these annual pollution spells.
This fall, nature has revealed the alarming hollowness of the
official position. A delay in the monsoon and a deep drought
have left the fires to burn out of control across 300,000
hectares--and the haze to thicken like a deadly blanket.
Birds have fallen, and schoolkids have fainted in
playgrounds. The economic destruction--to tourism, to crops,
to land--has been huge. The disaster has shown how dangerous
it is to rely on reckless development for nonstop growth. And
it sends a signal to the region's policymakers: Rethink your
attitudes toward the environment and growth now, before it's
too late.
PULP FACTION. There's a lot to rethink. Local activists at
the Indonesian Forum for the Environment charge that the
tight connections between the Suharto government and its
favored business associates have played a large role in
creating this devastating smog. Indonesia's palm oil,
plywood, and pulp-and-paper industries win land concessions
from the government. Then after cutting down valuable trees,
they burn commercially unviable ones and plant cash crops
like oil palm, acacia, and eucalyptus. ''They use fires for
land clearing because it is the cheapest way,'' laments
Antung Dedy, subdirector for environmental damage at
Indonesia's Environment Ministry. Also to blame are migrant
farmers from overcrowded Java who use their traditional
slash-and-burn practices.
Embarrassed by the scale of the disaster, the ministry has
announced an investigation into the roles played by 176
companies in starting the fires. But businessmen close to
President Suharto are defiant. ''Why should we burn? We need
the raw materials. It does not make sense,'' said Mohamad
''Bob'' Hasan, chairman of Apkindo, Indonesia's plywood
cartel, at a press conference. He blamed local farmers and
accused environmentalists ''that have connections with
communist groups'' of slandering reputable firms.
While the companies deny any wrongdoing, the economic and
environmental destruction mounts. Now that zero visibility
has closed remote airports, Malaysian travel agencies have
lost more than 30% of their business, and Silkair and Merpati
Nusantara Airlines have canceled some flights from Singapore.
Tourism makes up 3% of Indonesia's gross domestic product,
11% of Singapore's, and 6% of Malaysia's. The out-of-control
fires have even destroyed 3,000 hectares of oil palm
plantations in North Sumatra. Indonesia, which had hoped to
export 4.5 million metric tons of palm oil this year, now has
to import oil to meet domestic needs.
The region may suffer permanent ecological damage from this
season of woe. In primary rain forests not yet burning, a 20%
reduction in sunlight has lowered temperatures by 6C, which
will affect fungi in the soil that promote new growth. The
fires killed many small mammals, leaving tigers without food.
Parched soil and ash will wash out to sea, smothering coral
reefs, concludes Ron Lilley, species conservation officer at
the World Wide Fund for Nature in Jakarta.
When the monsoons arrive and put out these fires, the
region's governments will probably forget the whole matter.
That would be a huge mistake. Southeast Asia's development is
now so intense that the region's governments must manage it
more effectively. That means sharing information on
environmental threats with neighbors, giving regulators more
clout, funding studies of the impact of logging, scrutinizing
the relationship between government and business, and
speeding response to disasters. The alternative is to reap
more short-term gain until the costs of a polluted
environment become overwhelming. That's the kind of setback
the now-beleaguered nations of Southeast Asia cannot afford.
Updated Oct. 2, 1997 by bwwebmaster