Southeast Asia’s seasonal ‘haze’ problem stems from specific low-cost ‘slash and burn’ farming methods used by particular countries in the region. These methods typically involve the burning of trees and plants by farmers to prepare fields for cultivation.
Southeast Asia’s seasonal ‘haze’ problem stems from specific low-cost ‘slash and burn’ farming methods used by particular countries in the region. These methods typically involve the burning of trees and plants by farmers to prepare fields for cultivation.
In 2019, nearly 2500 schools were ordered to close across Malaysia as a result of public health concerns resulting from toxic smoke haze in the air.
Air pollution knows no regional or national borders, and the haze which results from these farming practices can measure hundreds of kilometers across, simultaneously blanketing multiple countries across the Southeast Asia region, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, and more.
Long-term sustainability issues aside, ‘slash and burn’ farming methods release huge amounts of harmful chemical and particulate air pollution into the atmosphere, with trans-national consequences for air quality.
There is still work to be done to confirm the specific health impact of long-term exposure to Southeast Asia’s seasonal haze, but studies have shown that long-term PM2.5 exposure is associated with increased mortality from certain diseases, such as those that are cardio-pulmonary related and more recently, likelihood of dying from from COVID-19.
Air pollution kills around 7 million people every year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), accounting for one in eight deaths worldwide in 2012. The main causes of death were stroke and heart disease, followed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), lung cancer, and respiratory infections among children.
In the summer of 2013, a plane carried Tan Yi Han over the Straits of Malacca to Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province, the largest palm-oil production region in Indonesia. Tan, then a 28-year-old financial consultant, was volunteering with the Global Environment Center, a Malaysian group that has worked for years to prevent and mitigate haze.
Hazy skies may all look similar, but the emissions from any particular source are unique. A factory smokestack in Beijing releases a different mix of chemical compounds into the atmosphere than an automobile tailpipe in New Delhi does.
On a summer afternoon, the skies were a milky white in Riau, the Indonesian province that produces about a quarter of Indonesia's palm oil. My first stop was the headquarters of WALHI, an NGO in the city of Pekanbaru that lobbies the Indonesian government for action on haze and other environmental problems.
When the wind blows from the west, smoke can whip east across the Straits of Malacca and into both Singapore and Kuala Lumpur (the capital of nearby Malaysia) -- collectively home to about 7 million people.
The task of mitigating pollution is also clouded by politics. Countries in southeast Asia have little control over what blows across their borders: unlike the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) lacks the legal authority to force its members to act against their own interests.
Against this backdrop, Tan Yi Han, the Singaporean financial consultant and self-styled haze activist, is hoping to influence the regional debate on haze. In early 2014, he founded a citizens' organization called "People's Movement to Stop Haze," or PM Haze, to kick-start the discussion.