ANOTHER three years for the haze to really go away? Outrageous. But, that’s what Indonesian President Joko Widodo is now saying. In a swift departure from the tough stand just a few weeks ago, he has switched to singing a helpless tune on deliberate forest fires in his homeland troubling practically everyone across the region with the resultant air pollution.
That means the annual choking haze that we are experiencing for the past two months would be back again this time next year, and the next. That could mean Malaysia would host the Sea Games in 2017 in smog. That could also mean Malaysians would go to the polls in 2018 wearing face masks as they queue up outside the polling stations.
Less than a month ago, Widodo, a.k.a. Jokowi, personally got to the ground to inspect the fires in Sumatra, where he said he meant business and asked his forestry minister to revoke licences of plantations adopting the slash-and-burn methods once they are found guilty on criminal charges. “I have said I no longer want to talk about the cause of the problem or what is the solution,” he had said.
So much for that, because three days ago, he told the BBC in an exclusive interview that he needed time to tackle the forest-burning, saying it would take three years for results to be seen. And he dismissed criticisms he had failed to deliver on election promises.
No haste to tackle the haze, so we will continue to suffer. To make it worse, our weatherman has been saying that the region, especially Malaysia, is on the verge of being hit by the El Nino phenomenon which brings hot and dry conditions. Add this to forest fires, wind patterns and haze this time next year and we will get a perfect storm of “all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey” and “smoke gets in your eyes”, plus water shortage.
Everyone has had enough of the situation. Bilateral and multilateral haze talks don’t seem to work, and the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution sorely lacks bite. That explains why certain parties in Singapore are now considering legal action to recover damages inflicted by the smog that has led to health problems, a scuttling of business operations, the grounding of flights and a host of other related issues.
I can understand the anguish from the experience of a five-hour flight delay I had to endure two Sundays ago. The flight from Subang airport to Alor Star was scheduled to depart at 10.30am. As required, I got to the airport one hour earlier. But, what a shocker when I found out that even flights that were supposed to have taken off at 6am were still being held back as visibility was poor. A senior minister going to Kota Baru was seen drowning his sorrows in teh tarik at a kopitiam. He said he had cancelled his flight.
It being the last day of the school holidays, the passenger waiting area was bursting at the seams with hardly any standing room left. The air-conditioning could not be effective with that kind of crowd and babies were bawling everywhere. I sought refuge at one little corner of a choco late shop, but my blood pressure was on the rise, made worse of course by the continuous techno music blaring through the system.
The backlog eased a little after more than two hours as flights resumed, and by the time my flight took off, it was 3.30pm — five hours late.
The scenario was but a tiny part of the whole gamut of troubles resulting from the haze, so, I understand the desire by many parties to seek an immediate end and to ask for compensation. Imagine, how many appointments missed and business deals might have gone down the drain from that Sunday’s airport torment alone.
But, litigation is not that simple or straightforward, more so since this is a transboundary issue. The case of the Rhine River pollution in 1986, when toxic chemicals spilled into the river from Basel in Switzerland, causing contamination downstream in Germany, France and the Netherlands, comes to mind. Legal experts were stonewalled with the issues at hand.
It looks very much the same here — what litigation forum, or which court, could the injury be brought to, and what law applies? In all of history, only in a few cases are citizens of one country able to go directly to the courts of another country to litigate a case of transboundary pollution.
Then there is the other legal complexity — who can be the plaintiff? And, who are the defendants? How do we link the haze to a direct source, such as a specific plantation?
Even if all the requirements are met, how long is a case likely to take to be disposed? Longer than Jokowi’s three-year pledge? -
The freelance writer is an award-winning columnist