How Indonesia’s wildfire smoke is choking Southeast Asia
Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.
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- Wildfires in Indonesia have sent dense smoke across parts of Southeast Asia, worsening respiratory problems and reducing air quality.
- Fires have burned nearly 300,000 hectares in Indonesia since the start of the year, with peatlands among the hardest-hit areas.
- Malaysia declared an emergency in part of Sarawak, where about 650 schools are expected to close next week.
A dense cloud of smoke from fires burning across Borneo and Sumatra is spreading through Indonesia and into neighboring Malaysia, Singapore and even the Philippines.
The toxic haze has driven up respiratory problems and forced numerous schools to close in Indonesia. In Malaysian Borneo, authorities have also taken emergency measures. Malaysia declared an emergency on Friday in a region of Sarawak, where about 650 schools are expected to remain closed next week.
Most of the fires are concentrated in Borneo, which Indonesia shares with Brunei and Malaysia, and on Sumatra. Nearly 300,000 hectares have burned in Indonesia since the beginning of the year, and experts warn that the worst may still be ahead.
We are already observing really extreme fire-related emissions, comparable to those in previous El Niño years, as well as the scale of the smoke, haze and impacts on air quality.
Indonesia’s carbon emissions rose from late July. By the end of last month, emissions had reached levels comparable to those recorded during strong El Niño years such as 2015 and 2019, Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, told AFP.
“We are already observing really extreme fire-related emissions, comparable to those in previous El Niño years, as well as the scale of the smoke, haze and impacts on air quality,” Parrington said.
El Niño is powerful this year, it is reaching record levels.
CAMS’s Fire Emission Watch portal recorded more than 23 million tonnes of emissions from the fires during the past seven days. That exceeds the 20.7 million tonnes recorded in 2015, a year marked by a powerful El Niño event.
Analysts say El Niño has created drier conditions that make the fires harder to contain. David Gaveau, founder of the forest-fire monitoring group Nusantara Atlas, said the weather pattern was powerful and approaching record levels, but called it only the trigger. He attributed the deeper cause to five decades of deforestation and forest degradation.
Slash-and-burn practices, illegal except for small farmers, are linked to many of the fires. Large companies, including palm-oil producers, have also faced scrutiny. Fires in peatlands are particularly difficult to extinguish because dried layers of partially decomposed organic matter become flammable. More than 210,000 hotspots were detected in Indonesian peatlands between January and August, according to the NGO Pantau Gambut.
It is only the trigger.
About this summary
Originally published by TVN Panamá in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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