The haze is back: Stop pointing fingers and tackle root causes of fires

AFTER a haitus of a few years, the haze is back. It hit Singapore at the weekend when the air pollution index crossed into the unhealthy range.

Even so, Singapore has been spared the worst so far. But a small shift in wind direction could see a repeat of the situation that caused so much economic damage and sickness in 2015 when 2.6 million hectares in Indonesia burned between June and October. So far this year, about 300,000 hectares have been ravaged by fire in Indonesia. Once again the El Nino weather phenomenon seems to have aggravated the conditions in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

To be fair, Indonesia, under President Joko Widodo, has sought to mitigate the fire situation since 2015. There has been a discernible effort to address the root causes of fires, such as deforestation and poor management of peatlands. It should be noted that peatlands form some of the densest carbon stocks in the world and, when burnt, produce dangerous air pollutants. Jakarta created a Peatland Restoration Agency, extended a deforestation moratorium and strengthened local firefighting capabilities. For instance, the Agency was given the task of restoring 2 million hectares of degraded peatlands. Then there is the land-swap programme that enables land owners who have plantations on peat to trade in their lots and move to non-peat locations. More significantly, civil society has been mobilised to help create an accurate map of Indonesia's peatlands.