WHAT'S THE STORY?

WHILE the West is worrying about whether barbecued sausages are a health hazard, millions of people and animals are at risk as huge swathes of Indonesia go up in smoke.

The forest fires have been described as the biggest environmental crime of the 21st century, yet this hell on earth has been largely ignored by the world’s media.

Children are choking to death, poisonous smog is so thick in places that schools and airports have been closed while warships are on standby to evacuate people from the worst affected areas. Six provinces have declared a state of emergency and in less than a month the catastrophe has released more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than Germany does in a year.

The fires, which are believed to have cost $14 billion in damage so far, are not only causing an extreme health hazard in Indonesia but also in nearby countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines.

The human suffering is immense but threatened species like the clouded leopard, sun bear, Sumatran tiger, Sumatran rhinoceros, orang-utans and gibbons are also at risk with the man-made fires destroying their habitats.

Already there have been 500,000 registered cases of smog-related respiratory illnesses with many expected to die from the long-term impacts. Altogether more than 40 million Indonesians have been affected, but while efforts are being made to contain the current fires, little is being done to address the cause – forest clearance for commerce.

CYANIDE

LITTLE Hanum Angriawati used to plead with her father Muklis to stop smoking. Last month she died from the effects of breathing in the noxious smog in Riau, the epicentre of the country’s smoke haze.

“She motivated me to quit smoking,” said her grieving father. “She didn’t like it when I smoked.”

A mild irritation turned into a hacking cough which brought up a yellowish-black liquid from her lungs.

She fought for her life for a week in intensive care but the damage was too great.

“The doctors said she died of respiratory failure,” said Muklis. “There was nothing else.”

Hanum was not the first to die as a result of the fires and she will not be the last.

The current conflagration has already eclipsed the fires in 2006, which were the worst since 1997, when around 15,000 babies and toddlers are estimated to have died because of air pollution.

The problem is that it is not just the forests that are on fire but the land itself. The trees are rooted in huge mounds of peat that, once lit, can smoulder for months releasing giant clouds of carbon monoxide, methane, ozone and other gases like ammonium cyanide.

Decades of destruction by farming and timber companies have wreaked havoc on the forests with the situation made worse by draining ditches cut through the peat to dry the land. What remains of the forests are being cleared further by companies moving in to produce palm oil and other commodities.

They clear the land by torching it but the fires this year have developed into a full scale conflagration because of the effects of the El Nino weather phenomenon.

CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

THIS year’s Indonesian forest fires are so extreme they could affect the entire planet.

“This is an extraordinary crime against humanity,” said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho of Indonesia’s disaster agency. “This is due to human acts because 99 per cent of forest fires were started deliberately.”

So far there have been over 120,000 fires in the country this year, giving off nearly a billion metric tons, or a gigaton of carbon dioxide. The planet is estimated to have less than 1,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide left to emit to have a two-thirds chance of keeping global warming below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

While emissions from ordinary wildfires can be partially offset as vegetation and trees grow back, the peat fires are very different.

“What is burning is, for the large part, peat layers that have been deposited over thousands of years. So this is really a net source of emissions just like fossil fuels are,” said Guido van der Werf, of VU University in Amsterdam.

The emissions from the fires far exceed Indonesia’s emissions from fossil fuels.

“The forests in Indonesia are generally not flammable, so these fires are virtually all caused by people, or land clearing,” said Susan Minnemeyer, of Global Forest Watch Fires. She added that there is “little enforcement and little capacity to actually put them out once they’ve started.”

CRISIS

INDONESIA’S President Joko Widodo cut short his visit to the United States last week to fly home to attend to the crisis but experts are sceptical about his commitment to tackling the people and companies causing the problem.

They point to his government’s subsidies for palm oil production saying these will only encourage companies to keep burning.

Consumer pressure has resulted in some businesses pledging to stop destroying the rainforest but others have been slow to follow.

The picture is further complicated by the fact that corruption and fascism still flourish in the country with the leaders of the death squads guilty of murdering an estimated million people under the Western-backed Suharto regime not only still around but prospering through organised crime, including illegal deforestation.

Political murders continue in places like West Papua with a paramilitary youth organisation of three million members supporting the mass killers who, far from being brought to justice, are often treated as heroes.

Despite previous government commitments, land-use and forest patterns have remained unchanged in the country over the last decade with around 3.7m acres of tree cover removed every year.

It is hoped that the expected monsoon rains will be heavy enough to stop the fires but even if they do, the situation will continue to arise each year until strong action is taken to prevent the damage.

Whether the forthcoming global climate summit in Paris in December will even raise the issue remains to be seen.