Plumes of smoke over Southeast Asia: Indonesia is polluting its neighbors – and itself

Indonesia has been battling severe forest, bush and peat fires since July. More than 19,000 square kilometers have already burned, mainly in southern Sumatra and Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. In addition to the fires, their smoke is particularly problematic. It bathes many places in ghostly light, also darkens the sky in the neighboring countries of Singapore and Malaysia and sometimes drastically reduces visibility.

Above all, people are deprived of the air they can breathe. School lessons are canceled in many places; in Malaysia alone this affected 600,000 children. In Indonesia, 333,000 people had to seek medical treatment because of the smog by September, including 75,000 children under the age of five. According to calculations by the Finnish Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea), 3,560 people died in Indonesia in September alone due to increased air pollution caused by smoke. In total, almost 58 million people are affected.

Indonesia's government boasts of having mobilized 72,000 firefighters, soldiers and police to fight the fire. An additional 2,100 doctors would look after people's health in particularly affected regions. In addition, 5.3 million breathing masks were distributed.

According to media reports, the authorities are also experimenting with a mixture of dry ice and salt. This is sprayed into clouds from 15 aircraft and is intended to create artificial rain. This generated a lot of media attention, but hardly put out any fires or improved the air.

Fire and smoke have long since become a major domestic and foreign policy problem for President Prabowo Subianto, who has been in office for two years. In recent months, his popularity ratings in surveys have halved.

There are regular fires in Indonesia after the end of the rainy season in April. The causes are large-scale clearing of the rainforest to make room for palm oil plantations, slash-and-burn practices by small farmers and the drainage of peat bogs. But the fires haven't been as bad as they are now for at least ten years. One reason for this is this year's El Niño effect, which has led to exceptional drought.

Prabowo's government has been accused of neglecting the problem and having no strategy to address it. It is criticized that the annual budget of the BNPB disaster protection authority has been drastically reduced. This year, at the equivalent of 24.26 million euros, it was only 4 percent of the amount in 2020. In mid-October, Prabowo also fired the head of the authority because of corruption in his environment.

Forest Minister Raja Juli Antoni admitted that the fires are 99 percent human-caused. His ministry suspended the licenses of 32 companies that cut down rainforest in order to be able to grow palm oil or rubber. But according to the environmental organization Walhi, there are fires in the concession areas of 372 companies. The governments of Singapore and Malaysia are urging Jakarta to take effective measures. But this triggers nationalist reflexes in Indonesia. According to Walhi, 66 of the companies suspected of being responsible have ties to Singapore and 27 to Malaysia.

There have recently been demonstrations against the environmental disaster in several cities in Indonesia. In addition to punishing the companies responsible for the fires, there were repeated calls for the declaration of a state of emergency. But ex-General Prabowo, of all people, refuses this and says: “I suspect the only solution is rain.”

In the event of an emergency, Prabowo would have to reallocate budget funds towards more firefighting efforts. And that would probably particularly affect the billion-dollar free school lunch program. But that is the populist part of Prabowo's otherwise elite-oriented government program. The promise of free food allows him to appear close to the people and may have contributed to his election victory. The program has now fallen into disrepute due to corruption and thousands of cases of food poisoning. According to a survey, more than 60 percent are now calling for the program to be abolished.

The Catholic German aid organization Misereor points out in a statement that consumer behavior in western industrialized countries is partly responsible because of the high demand for palm oil there. It “can be found in many of the products we need, from chips and sweets to margarine, soaps and cosmetics,” says Indonesia speaker Christine Kögel. When purchasing, you should therefore pay attention to socially and environmentally friendly production conditions.