Indonesia's forest fires feed 'brown cloud' of

pollution choking Asia's cities

An acrid haze hangs over cities in south-east Asia, where every year 700,000 people die due to air
pollution. An IPCC report warns some major urban centres could become uninhabitable

People wear masks to protect themselves from the haze in Pekanbaru, Riau province, Indonesia.
Photograph: Rony Muharrman/AP

John Vidal in Manila

Saturday 22 March 2014 21.52 GMT Last modified on Tuesday 25 March 2014 09.21 GMT

High above the vast Indonesian island of Sumatra, satellites identify hundreds of plumes of smoke
drifting over the oil palm plantations and rainforests. They look harmless as the monsoon winds
sweep them north and east towards Singapore, Malaysia and deep into Cambodia, Laos and
Thailand. But at ground level, south-east Asian cities have been choking for weeks, wreathed in an
acrid, stinking blanket of half-burned vegetation mixed with industrial pollution, car exhaust fumes
and ash.

From Palangkarya in Borneo to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, the air has been thick, the sun a dull
glow and face masks obligatory. Schools, airports and roads have been closed and visibility at times
has been down to just a few yards. Communities have had to be evacuated and people advised to
remain indoors, transport has been disrupted and more than 50,000 people have had to be treated for
asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses in Sumatra alone. Last week more than 200
Malaysian schools were forced to close, and pollution twice reached officially hazardous levels.

The Asian "haze", which comes and goes with the wind and droughts, is back with a vengeance just
eight months after an embarrassed Indonesian government promised it would never happen again
and was forced to apologise to neighbouring countries for the pollution that blanketed the region in
June 2013.

Mixed with the dense photo-chemical smogs that regularly hang over most large traffic-choked
Asian cities, south-east Asia's air pollution has become not just a major public health hazard but is
said to be now threatening food production, tourism and economic expansion. In addition, say
scientists, it may now be exacerbating climate change.

According to Nasa satellite maps, more than 3,000 separate fires have been recorded across
Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia since mid-January, more than in June 2013 when the pollution
spiked to dangerous levels and became a regional diplomatic crisis. This time, the monsoon winds
mostly spared Singapore but sent the thick smog from burning peat soils and vegetation over much
of the region. Around 10 million people and an area the size of Britain and France have been
affected.

Just as in 2013, most of this year's fires appear to have been started in Riau province, northern
Sumatra, the centre of the rampant Indonesian palm oil and pulp-paper industries. According to
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, 70% of these fires were lit by landowners wanting to clear
ground for more plantations. But while Indonesia is widely blamed for the air pollution, the latest
satellite images show fires burning and haze spreading across Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos
and as far away as the Philippines and Papua New Guinea.

What has surprised observers is the timing: the burning season, when farmers clear land, does not
usually start for many months. Monitoring groups such as Walhi, the World Resources Institute and
Greenpeace say the fires are linked both to the worst drought seen in years and corruption and
inaction at government level. So far, says the Riau government, only a handful of suspects have
been held for setting the fires.

Nearly half are burning on land managed by large pulpwood, palm oil and logging companies that
have turned the rainforest into a giant fire-prone region by clearing millions of acres for plantations,
says Nigel Sizer of the Washington-based World Resources Institute, which uses satellite data to
pinpoint hot spots. The corporations have denied involvement, saying the latest fires are illegally
set. "The fires are starting outside our forest concessions but with the heavy, circular winds they're
jumping everywhere," said Kusnan Rahmin, president director of the pulp and paper manufacturer
April Indonesia.

Sizer says: "Even if they did not start the fires, they are responsible for massive and dramatic
clearing of forests in the regions that have been burning, and to some extent for the conflicts with
local communities that may be starting fires to stake their claim to land awarded in concessions to
the companies."

"Once ignited, peat fires are extremely difficult to extinguish and generate massive air pollution that
contributes to the choking haze now blanketing much of Sumatra," says Rhett Butler, editor of the
international forest conservation website Mongabay.

Scientists now fear that the Asian haze will intensify and become an annual event as the population
of the region rises to an estimated five billion people and climate change bites over the next 30
years. This week's IPCC report on the expected impacts of climate change will warn of the cities
becoming uninhabitable for millions as temperatures rise. Droughts are expected to become longer
and more intense and the number of extremely hot days to grow.

Still unclear is how far the haze from burning forests feeds into Asia's rapidly worsening urban air
pollution to form a semi-permanent toxic cloud thick enough to disrupt monsoons and weather
patterns across the world and reduce sunlight and crop yields.

From being more or less accepted as the inevitable price of industrial development and poverty
reduction just a few years ago, air pollution has risen dramatically up the region's political agenda
as the costs are counted. Asia is now the centre of global air pollution, which along with obesity is
the world's fastest growing cause of death.

Every year, says a recent Lancet report, more than 2.1 million people in Asia die prematurely from
air pollution, mostly from the minute particles of diesel soot and gases emitted by cars and lorries,
as well as half-burned vegetation from forest burning. Of these deaths, 1.2 million were in east Asia
and China, and 712,000 in south Asia, including India.

According to the Lancet report, by a consortium of universities working in conjunction with the
UN, Asia loses more than 50m years of healthy life from fine particle air pollution per year. Air
pollution also contributes to higher rates of cognitive decline, strokes and heart attacks, it says. In a
separate report last month, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences claimed that Asian air
pollution was now affecting climate around the world and making cities like Beijing uninhabitable
and suggestive of what a "nuclear winter" might be like.

"Pollution originating from Asia clearly has an impact on the upper atmosphere and it appears to
make such storms or cyclones even stronger," says Renyi Zhang, a professor of atmospheric
sciences at Texas A&M University and a co-author of the study with Nasa scientists. "This
pollution affects cloud formations, precipitation, storm intensity, and other factors and eventually
impacts climate. Most likely, pollution from Asia can have important consequences on the weather
pattern here over North America", said Zhang. The study backs UN research that suggests a layer of
air pollution, the "brown cloud", regularly covers the upper atmosphere over Asia between January
and March and could precipitate an environmental disaster that could affect billions of people.

It is, says scientists, the result of forest fires, the burning of agricultural wastes, dramatic increases
in the burning of fossil fuels in vehicles, industries and power stations, and emissions from millions
of inefficient cookers burning wood and cow dung.

"The effects of the 'Asian brown cloud' have been linked to the retreat, over the last half a century,
of glaciers in the Himalayas that supply water to major rivers, including the Yangtse, the Ganges
and the Indus," says co-author Harshal T. Pandve.

Asian leaders have been slow to understand and act on air pollution, but are now aware of people's
anger. China, embarrassed by air pollution before the 2008 Olympics, says it is now costing its
economy $400bn a year, or 6% of its GDP. Beijing last month pledged $1.6bn to reward cities for
tackling it and said it planned to close 300 factories. Meanwhile, Singapore has proposed a law
which would allow it to fine foreign companies for causing cross-border air pollution. But observers
say passing new laws will not be enough. In the Philippines, where car numbers are predicted to
quadruple within 20 years, a brown cloud hangs over the mega-city of Metro Manila most days,
despite higher standards for vehicles and draconian laws.

"Most Asian governments are still concerned with economic development to the detriment of
everything else," says Vicky Segovia, of Manila's Clean Air partnership. "We are not impressed by
any of them."