Hundreds march to highlight haze and climate change (updated)

KUALA LUMPUR: Over 300 people marched from Sogo to Dataran Merdeka to voice
their displeasure against inaction over climate change.
Organised by Klima Action Malaysia, the rally contained seven demands for action
against the haze and another four against climate change.
The rally started at around 4.30pm on Saturday (Sept 21) when rally-goers started
walking towards Dataran Merdeka.
Police had asked participants to move to the pavement as they were obstructing
traffic when they were about 500m away from Dataran Merdeka.
The participants carried placards demanding action against climate change to save
the earth.
They sang and chanted "darurat iklim" (climate emergency) as they walked.
Indigenous rights activist Mustafa Along, 32, from Gua Musang, Kelantan said: "We
are unable to do anything so we are taking our own initiative to help create
awareness. We want the society and government to realise that climate change is
happening and something must be done about it."
Subang lawmaker Wong Chen shared a similar view, saying that trans-boundary
laws are needed to help put an end to the haze.
"I will bring it up in Parliament and suggest that satellite images be used to show
areas that are affected by the haze, and we will ask the corporations to defend
themselves," he added.
The rally ended peacefully at around 6.40pm.
The rally was part of the Global Climate Strike, which took place in various cities
worldwide, to protest climate change.
Accept neighbours' help

JAKARTA (ANN): Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad wonders aloud why a neighbour
clearly in desperate need would dismiss offers for help — as thousands of schools remain closed,
orangutans are relocated and millions choke on smoky haze across parts of Sumatra, Kalimantan,
Malaysia and Singapore.
"We had offered help all the time. We have airplanes that are special, which spray water," he said, as
quoted by the New Straits Times Friday, referring to forest fires in Indonesia.
"I don't know why Indonesia is not accepting our help. I would also like to ask [President Joko 'Jokowi'
Widodo] why the government doesn't want to receive our help but I have not done that yet," he added.
Indonesian diplomats seem to have given up, deferring queries on neighbours' complaints to the
Environment and Forestry Ministry, for instance — whose officials tell journalists to ask the Foreign
Ministry instead.
In response to the defensive attitude among some Indonesian authorities, leaders from neighbouring
countries reiterate that no one is blaming anyone. Indonesian police have made arrests of several
people suspected of causing the fires, but of course this does not answer the need to simply inhale
breathable air, no matter where the foul smog is coming from. Residents affected by the haze in
Indonesia and neighbouring countries have every right to question Indonesia's commitment not only
to compliance with a regional treaty on haze, but also to the wellbeing of its own citizens and that of
its neighbours.
Expectations of Asean agreements are often not very high and in times of need the 2002 Asean
Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution especially falls flat. Ratified only in 2014 by foot-
dragging lawmakers, it provides mechanisms for neighbours helping each other in the annual
occurrences of land and forest fires. Indonesia's central and local governments and private
businesses say they have taken several measures to stop fires but prevention continues to be
necessary in dry periods, while critics say law enforcement such as against slash-and-burn practices
for land clearing, often blamed for triggering fires, is also lacking.
Indonesians and their neighbours in affected regions need help now. Help is being offered. But as the
above treaty says, "Assistance can only be employed at the request of and with the consent of the
requesting Party, or, when offered by another Party or Parties, with the consent of the receiving Party."
Only when this consent is secured can governments collaborate through Asean's Coordinating Center
for Transboundary Haze Pollution Control.
Whether our President represents Indonesia or not at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly
in New York, it will be indeed difficult to answer possible questions regarding the impression, at least,
that Indonesia, which has secured a nonpermanent seat on the United Nations Security Council,
seems to be refusing assistance to put out fires.
Optimism that we can contain the fires ourselves does not help while children suffer even more from
the effect of toxic pollutants compared with adults. Rushing the children to the nearest health facilities
involves slow, careful navigation when parents cannot even see anything 10 meters ahead. We need
all the help we can get. Now. - The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network
THE HAZE PROBLEM – Why we need to take our 
environment seriously!
By Elena Koshy ­ September 22, 2019 @ 8:01am
“The haze is back again,” murmurs my 12-year-old niece as we gaze out to the
horizons, from our balcony. We can’t see the buildings in the foreground. The
skies overhead is a sallow grey, the sun is a burnt orange; its usual brilliance
choked by the thickening cloud of vapour that has descended on most of our
cities. “It’s not haze,” I retort. I can’t bring myself to call this slow but
effectual poisoning of the very air we breathe, haze.

Haze isn’t a word sufficient enough to describe the acrid smog that has been
the bane of our very existence for over two decades. But truth be told, we’ve
not done much about it. Don a mask, and we get by. It’ll soon pass, we reason.
It’s not our problem, we say, shrugging our shoulders. What can we do? We
ask resignedly.

Sustaining interest in this great but slow-burning crisis is a challenge no one

seems to have mastered. Only when the crisis causes or exacerbates an
acute disaster, is there a flicker of anxiety, but that quickly dies away. The
question is: How much worse does it have to get before we become truly
worried?

ASTOUNDING SILENCE

For more than two decades, the effects of forest fires in Indonesia have
resulted in a cloud of unbreathable air descending upon our cities. Haze, we
called it. The acrid smoke not only contains dust and smoke particles, but
sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, carbon monoxide and particulate
matter. These particles can go deep into the lungs, and in some cases, enter
the bloodstream, where the tiny particulate matters can even penetrate right
into the small air sacs in our lungs when inhaled.

Can we afford to be apathetic knowing that our children are breathing noxious
gas? We take to the streets when it comes to taxes, religion or politics. We
shake our fists and morph into keyboard warriors to rant on race politics,
rights and the high cost of living. Yet where’s the huge outcry when our
environment is affected?

It’s funny how environment, climate change, deforestation, wildlife extinction,

natural disasters and unmitigated pollution are generally met with silence and
indifference. Nothing much has been done to halt such unprecedented assault
on our natural heritage – the indiscriminate clearing of lands for development
and agriculture, unsustainable logging, wildlife trafficking, burning of forests
to make way for new crops, and so on. What’s a little smog in the grand
scheme of things?

The richer we are and the more we consume, the more self-centred and
careless of the lives of others we appear to become. Even if you somehow put
aside the direct, physical impacts of rising consumption, it's hard to
understand how anyone could imagine that economic growth is a formula for
protecting the planet.

So what we seem to see here is the turning of a vicious circle. The more harm
we do, the less concerned about it we become. And the more hyper-
consumerism destroys the physical fabric of the Earth, the more we try to find
ways to take advantage of what’s been entrusted to us for safekeeping and
protecting.

And now we pay the price.

BLAME GAME

Indonesia has been recognised as owning one of remaining significant tracts

of tropical rainforest in the world. Yet, with the rampant deforestation that
occurs annually, Indonesia is also the world’s third largest carbon emitter
with 68 per cent of the emission contributed from deforestation.

In 1997/1998, Southeast Asia was unprecedentedly blanketed by thick and

smoky haze. The haze trespassed international borders without any
restrictions – deliberately triggered by the wild and smouldering fire that
comes from biomass burning carried out by farmers to clear vegetation for
palm oil, pulp and paper plantations using the slash-and-burn method.

The slash-and-burn conflagration tore through sensitive rainforests where

dozens of endangered species live. This drew comparisons to the wildfires in
the Amazon basin that have raged in recent weeks which destroyed more than
0.8 million hectares. “That’s how they clear the land, using the cheapest
method and conducted by many people,” said Agus Wibowo, a spokesman for
Indonesia’s disaster management agency, to the New York Times. The dry
season has worsened the situation as well, with fires spinning out of control
into protected forested areas.

And more than 20 years on, our own complicit silence and lack of serious
action has exacerbated the situation. We’ve grown accustomed to expecting
the return of haze every year during Indonesia’s dry season. Central
Kalimantan is the worst-affected region, according to Indonesia’s disaster
management agency, with more than 455 hotspots detected. Fires rage on
and continue to destroy much of the natural habitat of Indonesia’s critically-
endangered Bornean orangutans.

Indonesia has recently named and shamed several palm oil companies with
Malaysian links as the culprits behind several forest fires in the country.
Indonesia's Environment Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said the four palm oil
companies whose land had been sealed off because fires have been spotted
were subsidiaries of Malaysian groups including the world's biggest producer
of sustainable palm oil.

The irony? When we come down hard on schools for showcasing the
devastating effects of oil palm plantations on orangutan population. We
censure the voice of our young people because the truth is so much harder to
navigate than painting a pretty picture of sustainable produce – past and
current environmental issues be damned. As much as efforts have been taken
by the government and the palm oil industry players to ensure the
sustainability of palm oil, it’s horrifyingly clear that there remains much more
to be done.

TIME TO TAKE ACTION

So let’s get real on how we need to tackle hard issues like the environment.
Protect what we have, take stern action on corporations that don’t practice
what they preach and increase the penalties for wildlife trade, poaching,
illegal logging, open burning and river pollution. Bring those responsible for
the forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan to justice and come up with an Act
that allows regulators to go after companies causing air pollution through
irresponsible burning of forests and peatlands in neighbouring countries.

We want to be known for our sustainable palm oil? Start being serious about
the word “sustainability” and ensure that the entire chain of production – be it
in this nation or in our neighbouring countries – adheres to the highest
standards of sustainability.

Authorities from both sides of the border must decipher the pattern that
seems to be repeating itself every year. How many new areas are being burnt
down? How many areas have ceased burning? How much does the dry
weather contribute to the forest fires that’s been raging on and how much of
this is attributed to forest clearing for crops? Why was this not anticipated,
knowing that every dry season will bring about a spate of forest fires? Most
importantly, why aren’t we bringing the perpetrators to justice?

We can’t afford to be lackadaisical any longer. Open burning isn’t merely

Indonesia’s problem. It’s ours. Open burning and forest clearing using the
slash-and-burn method occur in this country as well. Have we learnt from our
own mistakes?

The question remains whether we’ve put the right management practices in
place to prevent this from recurring in our own backyard. As the smog
threatens to take away all semblance of normalcy in our cities and suburbs,
it’s time for real action to be taken.

We need our forests, our wildlife and our environment to be protected. We

need clean air to live. Climate change is real, and we’re not just talking about
the weather. The climate is the Earth's most fundamental life support system,
one that determines whether we humans are able to live on this planet.

It comprises four components: the atmosphere (the air we breathe); the

hydrosphere (the planet's water); the cryosphere (the ice sheets and glaciers)
and the biosphere (the planet's plants and animals). By now, our activities had
started to modify every single one of these components. Our rivers are
polluted, our wildlife dwindling, our forests are logged and now, the very air
we breathe is affected!

As we sit cloistered in our homes and offices, schools are closed, the parks
are empty, fields and playgrounds are deserted and animals are dying
systematically through one of the worst environmental disasters that has ever
hit our nation. The fight for conservation MUST have our attention.
The repercussions are greater than we think. The 1997/1998 haze occurrence
wiped out the local population of fig wasps in the region. Fig wasps play a
crucial role in ecosystems as specialist pollinators. The relationship between
figs and fig wasps is arguably the most interdependent pollination symbiosis
known to man. Without one another, neither the fig nor fig wasp can complete
their life-cycle – a textbook example of co-evolution which is estimated to
have been ongoing for at least 60 million years. Figs are keystone species in
tropical regions worldwide. Their fruit supports the diets of many mammals
and birds. The extinction of fig wasps as a result of the haze was
catastrophic, causing the starvation of larger mammals like the sun bears and
bearded pigs. This was a well-documented case!

Losing a tiny insect may be insignificant to some, but they’re incredibly

important for the world’s ecosystems. Without wasps, the biodiversity of our
planet would be greatly impacted. We’re concerned about our difficulties in
living under such unhealthy circumstances, and rightfully so. But what about
the tiny insects and other wildlife that also need clean air to survive?”