Hundreds of people prayed for rain on Wednesday in an Indonesian province hard-hit by forest fires as south-east Asian environment ministers prepared to gather to discuss ways to tackle smoke haze covering the region.
Dry season fires caused by farmers and big businesses such as plantations have been burning for weeks in parts of Indonesia, creating a choking haze that has made many people ill, shut some Indonesian airports and threatened wildlife in protected forests.
Most of the blazes are in southern Sumatra, just across the Malacca Strait from Malaysia and Singapore, as well as Indonesia’s part of Borneo island.
In hard-hit Central Kalimantan province, hundreds of Muslims gathered in a field in the provincial capital Palangkaraya to pray for rain to clear the haze.
”As believers, the people of Palangkaraya pray for rain and ask for forgiveness for any wrongdoing,” Dendul Toepak, spokesperson for the Central Kalimantan government, told Reuters.
In other parts of the province, where rain had fallen, residents said visibility has improved significantly.
But Sutamto, a scientist at the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency in Jakarta, said immediate prospects for rain in Sumatra and Kalimantan were small.
Singapore has invited environment ministers from Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Brunei to meet in Singapore on Friday to discuss ways to help Indonesia extinguish forest and brush fires, Singapore’s government said in a statement on Wednesday.
But Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said the proposed meeting should be held in Indonesia.
”It would be best if the meeting takes place in Indonesia, the country with the most stake in the problem,” Wirajuda told reporters after a meeting of several Cabinet ministers to discuss the issue. He cited the city of Pekanbaru on Sumatra as a possible venue.
Watch and wait
Repeated attempts to stop the fires have failed in the past.
Severe fires and smog during a drought in 1997/98 made many people ill across a wide swathe of south-east Asia and cost local economies billions of dollars. It badly hit the tourism and airline sectors and this year’s haze has rekindled fears over the economic and health impacts to local economies.
Greg Clough, spokesperson for the Centre for International Forestry Research in Indonesia said he was reluctant to say whether the meeting would have any significant impact.
”It’ll have impact in terms of putting pressure on the Indonesian government in ratifying the agreement, but it remains to be seen whether that will happen,” said Greg Clough, spokesperson for the Centre for International Forestry Research in Indonesia. he said.
Indonesia bans slash-and-burn practices by farmers, timber firms and plantations. But prosecutions take time and few have stuck.
Adding to regional ire is Jakarta’s slowness to ratify an Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) pact aimed at tackling the problem.
Galvanised by the 1997/98 haze, Southeast Asian countries signed the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution in 2002. Indonesia says the bill is pending approval in Parliament.
In a separate statement on Wednesday, Singapore’s ministry of foreign affairs said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has written to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to ”express his disappointment over the recurring haze problem”.
”In his letter, Mr Lee had stated that Indonesia needed to deal with the problem in a timely and effective manner, so that investor confidence in Indonesia, Indonesia’s international standing and Asean’s credibility would not be affected,” the statement said.
Wirajuda said Indonesia understood concerns of neighbours.
”We are making efforts for more effective cooperation among the five Asean countries to address the fire and haze issue.”
Singapore’s pollution hit its highest level in nearly a decade on Saturday because of the haze, while air quality in the Malaysian capital and elsewhere in that country have hit unhealthy levels in recent weeks. – Reuters