Paradise Under Hell of Haze
The unnecessary suffering of the people in Sarawak, Southeast Asia needs to be highlighted under the annual recurrences of the haze.
This is the trail of smokes from commercial plantations burnt for planting palm oil trees thousands of kilometers away that reached a residential estate in Sarawak.
Malaysia’s state of Sarawak on the northern part of Borneo Island is in danger of perennial man-made disaster to its green rain forests.
This year, the unwelcome haze is back, albeit too early! And the people are bracing for yet another dirty air, inhaling it even in their enclosed houses days or even weeks to come.
The annual haze that blankets the whole South-east Asian countries is more dangerous than the impact brought about by the whole timber industries Malaysia and Indonesia combined.
The thick smog comes mainly from Indonesia’s Kalimantan Regions burning hundreds of thousand hectares of forests cut down for palm oil estates. The estates will then be burnt so that the cleared areas would be planted quickly, unlike Malaysia’s practice that let the cut trees, bushes and so forth to rot over longer periods of time. This system, although religiously practiced by many Malaysian estates, but a few are still practicing burning, adding to the smokes from the neighboring country.
A couple of years later, more smokes were added to the Kalimantan’s smog from Sumatera. Rubbing salt to wounds, Malaysia’s own palm oil estates spit more smog into the already polluted air that not only hurt the eyes, but causes asthmatic people acute respiratory problem.
An average size of a palm oil is 30,000 acres. One can image how much smoke such size of felled trees and leafy bushes can contribute to the haze.
The haze first came to being 1997 with thick smokes from Indonesia. Since then the haze, as it is commonly known now, has been making annual recurrences for the past eleven years until today. “Haze” was foreign to the people then. In fact, some even looked up for the meaning in the dictionary.
For most people living in Sarawak, the thick smog that blanketed their towns and cities, it was their first tastes of what a huge scale calamity is all about. They have never seen or experienced such a disastrous environment before that year.
The impact of haze untold problems and losses on health, business, air travel and the tourism industry appears to be taking the back seat.
Some people suggest that urgent action required is required to stop this man-made environmental disaster. They say that it is not enough to just have MOUs upon MOUs, agreements upon agreements when there is no concrete action taken by all the countries involved in the oil palm estates. They say that some body has to be responsible. Or better still the international community should put pressure on these countries to own up their mistake in letting oil palm estate owners to burn their hundred of thousand acres of estates.
Without applying pressure to these culprits, the people in Southeast Asia will continue to suffer from dirty haze in many years to come.
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Norman S. Duyung
On May 28, 2008 at 8:55 am
Main heading “Paradise Under Hell of Haze” by Roger J. Duyong seems to be striking in a sense that climate woes brought about by land developers in the palm oil estates and industries are increasingly alarming. The aftermaths of these heartrending activities are the climate change, adverse impacts to our ecosystem as well as posing side effects on human lives.
Therefore, we cannot ignore the fact that climate change is increasingly mounting a serious threat and natural hazards evidenced by the frequent and strength statistical factors. There should be tangible solutions as we strive to save human lives, devastation to land resources and infrastructure. Global community should take the initiative by formulating pragmatic modes operandi towards sustainable development of marine resources.
As we monitor closely the climate change it continues to behave strangely by exerting an impact on marine life. A slight rise in ocean temperature could endanger coral reefs altogether through bleaching, a negative reaction causing a coral to lose its colony of nutrient-gathering algae.
Nonetheless, something has to be done by minimizing the impact when critical areas are identified. Whenever fish corals and other tropical marine life is able to demonstrate immunity resistance to bleaching and damage, including other elements that contribute to their resilience.
Meanwhile, sources have it that the Western Pacific region, too, is not exempt from the serious threat posed by climate change and marine natural hazards. Therefore, it is a grave mistake to ignore climate change and the gravity of the problem relating to the ocean which would definitely undermine the rescuing strategies being adopted and the mobilized resources towards economic development and progress.
Anyway, we cannot run away from the fact that dealing with climate change is not simple as it may sound that entails complex issues such as those pertaining directly to quality of life, equity and environmental practices, among others.
Norman
Zebedee Duyung
On May 28, 2008 at 10:36 pm
This is another comment posted on the following article, brother using a different name.
In commenting Roger’s article on “Paradise Under Hell of Haze” is indeed a well chosen main heading aptly describes the haze havoc which definitely augurs well with the “Green Peace” movement to fulfill their aspiration to reduce haze phenomenon to its zero level possible.
Scientific discoveries have sufficient evidences leading to temperature changes which are likely to have profound and negative impact on society, the global economy and the natural world. This of course poses hazardous impact on investment opportunities made by companies which they must deal prudently.
Definition on the very terminology itself is an unanimous accepted consensus by linguistic experts. “Climate is the average pattern of weather over the long term.” Interestingly enough that the earth’s climate had been warming and cooling for millions of years, before we existed on our planet. There’s no question about it that our climate is getting warmer and warmer currently; an apparent indication of this phenomenon.
Climate change is not something new, but we should explore new preventive measures to curb the human induced haze activity . Climate change has direct impact on diverse fields encompassing the following including physics, chemistry, biology, geology, meteorology, oceanography, and even sociology.
Zebedee
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