Indonesia is burning. The greatest environmental disaster of the 21st century. Ignored by US [View all]

[Liberal_in_LA]

Indonesia is burning. So why is the world looking away?

A great tract of Earth is on fire. It looks as you might imagine hell to be. The air has turned ochre: visibility in some cities has been reduced to 30 metres. Children are being prepared for evacuation in warships; already some have choked to death. Species are going up in smoke at an untold rate. It is almost certainly the greatest environmental disaster of the 21st century – so far.

Fire is raging across the 5,000km length of Indonesia. It is surely, on any objective assessment, more important than anything else taking place today. And it shouldn’t require a columnist, writing in the middle of a newspaper, to say so. It should be on everyone’s front page. It is hard to convey the scale of this inferno, but here’s a comparison that might help: it is currently producing more carbon dioxide than the US economy. And in three weeks the fires have released more CO2 than the annual emissions of Germany.

But that doesn’t really capture it. This catastrophe cannot be measured only in parts per million. The fires are destroying treasures as precious and irreplaceable as the archaeological remains being levelled by Isis. Orangutans, clouded leopards, sun bears, gibbons, the Sumatran rhinoceros and Sumatran tiger, these are among the threatened species being driven from much of their range by the flames. But there are thousands, perhaps millions, more.

One of the burning provinces is West Papua, a nation that has been illegally occupied by Indonesia since 1963. I spent six months there when I was 24, investigating some of the factors that have led to this disaster. At the time it was a wonderland, rich with endemic species in every swamp and valley. Who knows how many of those have vanished in the past few weeks? This week I have pored and wept over photos of places I loved that have now been reduced to ash.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/indonesia-fires-disaster-21st-century-world-media

South-East Asia is choking on Indonesia’s forest fires
THE annual haze that blankets swathes of South-East Asia usually begins to recede in October. This year however the smoggy conditions—caused by fires set to clear farmland in rural Indonesia—only got worse. On October 26th Joko Widodo, Indonesia’s president, cut short a state visit to America to handle the crisis, which has become one of the worst in memory. With the onset of this year’s rainy season delayed by the “El Niño” weather cycle, it could be a month or more before all flames are doused.

The word “haze” hardly does justice to the poisonous clouds that have been billowing across the region since August. On bad days Singapore and parts of Malaysia have been enveloped by a reeking white mist that has closed schools and delayed flights. Lately it has also reached southern Thailand and the Philippines. Meanwhile the millions of Indonesians who live close to the hotspots, mostly on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, are breathing a soupy yellow fog which authorities say has killed at least ten people and caused respiratory problems in more than 500,000.


The blazes are not only a disaster for those who live in the region. Greenpeace says that years of draining and burning peatland, to make way for oil palms and other crops, has turned Indonesia into a “carbon bomb”. Guido van der Werf, a Dutch researcher, reckons that emissions from a three-week period during this year’s fires surpassed Germany’s total annual carbon output. On a daily basis, they may emit more carbon than does America’s economy—which is more than 20 times the size of Indonesia’s. Conservationists also fret about the impact on Indonesia’s endangered wildlife, not least the orangutan colonies in Sumatra.

Indonesia has enlisted more than 20,000 people to control the fires. After some hesitation, it has also accepted help from its neighbours, including Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. The rain that fell on October 28th was useful. But with more than 100,000 fires to fight, the Indonesian authorities badly need more downpours. In the meantime they have built reception centres with oxygen tanks and air-purifiers in the worst-affected areas. A clutch of navy ships is waiting off the coast of Borneo—apparently ready to serve as floating shelters for women and children, should parts of the island need evacuating.

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21677342-jungles-and-peatland-are-coughing-up-more-carbon-emissions-industrialised-economies-south-east



Sick, hungry orangutans fall victim to Indonesia's haze crisis
ndangered orangutans are falling victim to a devastating haze crisis that has left them sick, malnourished and severely traumatised as fires rage through Indonesia's forests, reducing their habitat to a charred wasteland.

Rescuers at a centre for the great apes on Borneo island are considering an unprecedented mass evacuation of the hundreds in their care, and have deployed teams on hazardous missions to search for stricken animals in the wild.

At the Nyaru Menteng centre in Kalimantan, sixteen baby orangutans have been put into isolation, suffering infections from prolonged exposure to the thick, yellow smoke suffocating Indonesia's half of Borneo island. A devoted carer tries to entertain the youngsters with toys and games as the infants recover from high fevers and serious coughs.

In another enclosure, several orangutans lie about listlessly, too exhausted to move after days hunting for food and water as fires relentlessly encroached on their forest homelands, forcing them to flee.

indonesia's fires labelled a 'crime against humanity' as 500,000 suffer
Haze has caused havoc, with schools in neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia shut down, flights grounded and events cancelled

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/26/indonesias-fires-crime-against-humanity-hundreds-of-thousands-suffer#img-1

Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of palm oil and fires are frequently intentionally lit to clear the land with the resulting haze an annual headache.

But this year a prolonged dry season and the impact of El Niño have made the situation far worse, with one estimate that daily emissions from the fires have surpassed the average daily emissions of the entire US economy.

The fires have caused the air to turn a toxic sepia colour in the worst hit areas of Sumatra and Kalimantan, where levels of the Pollutant Standard Index (PSI) have pushed toward 2,000. Anything above 300 is considered hazardous.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/26/indonesias-fires-crime-against-humanity-hundreds-of-thousands-suffer