This article first appeared in The Edge Review.

By Luke Hunt
Back in 1997 a rather irate Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad put a lid on local reporting of an unprecedented phenomenon. Burning off by major palm oil companies in nearby Indonesia had reached such levels that the entire region was blanketed by smog.

A petulant Mahathir also yelled at foreign correspondents covering the story alleging a grand conspiracy to blacken Malaysia’s name and undermine its tourism industry. Not quite.

A few years later a Malaysian minister famously snapped at critics of the government’s burgeoning love affair with palm oil plantations — and the scorched earth policy required to grow them. “What do you want?” He asked, “monkeys or gold?”

Ever since companies like Sime Darby and the Malaysian government have attempted to convince the world that Malaysian palm oil and rubber estates actually qualify as forests and are therefore entitled to financial compensation under international schemes designed to protect the environment – among them Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation or REDD.

It’s an absurd claim – and one that Indonesia has indicated it would like to follow – however, it is also an accurate reflection of a regional political and corporate culture that has caused tens-of-millions of people to choke on an environmental mess, clockwork-like, every year.

Southeast Asia has 24 million hectares of peat. More than 70 percent, or 20 million hectares, of this is in Indonesia, particularly in Sumatra, Borneo and West Papua and can reach up to 20 metres in depth. Peat fires can burn for months and continue burning underground long after the surface blaze has been extinguished by heavy annual rains.

Their contribution to global warming cannot be underestimated and the worst of those fires was back in 1997-98 when as much 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon may have been released into the atmosphere. Historically it was an extraordinary amount and is widely believed to be behind an acceleration in the increase of global carbon dioxide levels ever since.

Total costs incurred by medical institutions and through disruptions to travel and business was put at up to US$9 billion. Scientists have forecast that at the current burning off rate peat deposits could be wiped out by 2040. However, those realities continue to fall on deaf ears.

The prevailing attitude was borne home by Agung Laksono, the Indonesian minister responsible for coordinating a response to the current Haze enveloping a large swathe of Southeast Asia. He effectively accused Singaporeans of behaving like cry babies over the latest smog and told his country’s critics to “shut-up and grow a pair” adding: “This is not what the Indonesian nation wants it is because of nature.”

That was just further nonsense and an embarrassed President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono went on the offensive, appearing almost contrite on television while accepting responsibility for the latest disaster caused by the unbridled burning off of forests in Sumatra.

“As president of Indonesia, I apologise for what has happened and ask for the understanding of the people of Malaysia and Singapore,” Yudhoyono said. He also asked that people not apportion blame until investigations were complete.

The problem is that scientists and the authorities have known for 16 years who is responsible for the fires and where they occur. Malaysian and Singaporean companies are as much to blame as their Indonesian counterparts and their governments who tax them and the wealth funds that invest in them.

Indonesia’s Senior Presidential Aide Kuntoro Mangkusubroto named Asia Pacific Resources International, Asia Pulp and Paper and Sime Darby, as being involved with the current burning of Sumatra.

Also cited were subsidiaries operated by Singapore listed but Indonesian controlled Sinar Mas and Raja Garuda Mas, along with Kepong Berhad and Wilmar International of Singapore which claim to operate strict no-burning policies.

As usual the companies are blaming small land holders for the fires while Singapore and Malaysia are promising to scour their corporate records in search of violators and are promising to raise the issue at next week’s foreign ministers meeting for the Association Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Brunei.

That meeting will achieve little. Raising the Haze in an ASEAN forum is about as common as the acrid smoke which ruins the air people breathe. An Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution – widely criticized as a toothless tiger – was reached in 2003 but Indonesia still refuses to ratify it.

The inability to tackle the Haze effectively and stem the annihilation of the region’s natural environment by successive governments and their boardroom allies smacks of negligence and opens the companies to potential law suits and compensation claims.

Asthmatics, people with heart conditions, senior citizens, there are no shortages of groups who have been disadvantaged. Children in some parts cannot go to school, flights have been cancelled and this year’s Haze is shaping up to be as bad as the devastating smog of 1997.

A case could be made in Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the United Nations. The latter could possibly be fought in the International Criminal Court as a human rights issue — the right to breathe clean air.

Compensation packages and costly legal battles will punish the bottom line of the companies involved and inevitable hurt their stock price, however, this might prove far more effective in combating the Haze than the annual bouts of empty rhetoric and political paper shuffling that reoccur every 12-months.