Daily Lessons from Life 24 October 2010 - Haze highlights weak ASEAN cooperation: analysts

"Haze highlights weak ASEAN cooperation: analysts - Sun, Oct 24, 2010 AFP

SINGAPORE - Just a week after Southeast Asia hailed 'substantive progress' against cross-border air pollution, Singapore and parts of Malaysia are again being blanketed by smog from forest fires in Indonesia.

The problem, known euphemistically as 'the haze', raises fresh questions about the effectiveness of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), whose leaders will hold a summit in Hanoi from October 28-29.

Greenpeace South East Asia chief commented that Asean need to take concrete actions after talking about this issue for the more than 10 years now!"

I am not sure if I had commented on this haze challenge in the last few days in this Blog but I will reiterate some learning points anyway:

1. when the issue is so clear as to the root causes and the dire effects it has on the country of origin and its friendly neighbouring countries, it defied rational thinking by average people on the streets why this challenge cannot be tackled by the government?;

2. if it is purely economical consideration then the economic damages to the region and the affected countries far outweighed the cost of putting a stop to this ecological disaster many times over. This is especially so if the poor farmers who know nothing about how to re-fertilize their lands except to slash and burn. This is even simpler issue to tackle IF, as some claimed, the culprits are those BIG PLANTATION companies! Why? BIG PLANTATION companies are NOT the people! If it is the people's livelihood that is on the line, it is a bit dicey, though as I had alluded to, the poor farmers can be satisfied easily with some incentives and some help on how to re-fertilize their lands using a less environmental destructive method. As for the BIG Plantation Companies, they are operated legally, they are supposed to be law abiding, and if they run foils of the laws, they can be hauled to courts and legitimate, just and transparent sentences be passed to stop them from OPERATING! Simple!;

3. so the fact that this torny issue has not been properly and successfully tackled after more than 10 years points to one thing only. The Indonesian government is NOT interested to tackle this issue. Period. Simple. The question then turned to: why don't they want to resolve it? This is dicey as one can go many ways. e.g. the BIG Plantation Companies are strong supporters of the governments? they are the government or strongly linked to the government? they are paying off the local law enforcing authorities? etc;

4. of course, this is altogether a very different challenge IF it is the cultural thing! It is the tradition, custom and culture of the farmers using the slash and burn method, damned the other more efficient and effective methods! If so, well, it will take a while for the old farmers to pass on as I don't think the younger generation will want to live in this manner! :-)

May Greenpeace get its wish that Asean will go from NATO (No Action Talk Only) to ACNT (All Actions No Talk!).