Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines

ENVIRONMENT-THAILAND: Smog Hits Emergency Levels

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 14 2007 (IPS) - By declaring one northern province a disaster zone, the Thai government confirmed Wednesday the growing threat that millions of people face from thick smoke from out-of-control forest and brush fires.

Chiang Rai, which shares a border with Burma and Laos, is one of five provinces in the hilly stretches of Thailand that have been engulfed by smog for nearly two weeks, prompting residents to wear masks and forcing airlines to cancel flights due to poor visibility. The other affected provinces are Chiang Mai, Mae Hong Son, Nan and Lampang.

‘’It is hard to breathe; we can feel the air is thick and not clean when out on the streets,” Kingkan Kaewfun, a resident of Chiang Mai, told IPS over the telephone. ‘’You feel scratchy in the throat, as if something is stuck in it. It’s very irritating.”

The 29-year-old graduate student at Chiang Mai University describes the scale of polluted air that has descended on Chiang Mai, the country’s largest city in the north, as unprecedented. ‘’I have never experienced something like this before.”

There were also fears that Chiang Mai, one of Thailand’s tourist hotspots, would see a drop in the several million tourists that visit the province each year.

According to the pollution control department, the level of dust particles in the air is more than twice the normal average in places like Chiang Mai. The level of dust particles smaller than 10 microns (suspended particulate matter) had reached 284 micrograms per cubic metre, as against the accepted standard of 120 micrograms per cubic metre, reports ‘The Nation,’ a local English-language daily.

Wednesday’s decision by the military-appointed government of Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont to give Chiang Rai special powers to douse the spreading fires comes amidst a troubling forecast. Officials warn that the hazardous smoke could lead to all 17 northern provinces in this South-east Asian nation being declared environmental emergency zones.

The smog that has blanketed the five northern provinces is a regular feature at this time of the year, during the country’s dry season, which spreads from February through March. Hardly new, too, are the places where the smoke rises from, such as agricultural lands that are set on fire as part of the region’s slash-and-burn culture and forest fires.

‘’Fires are normal in that area at this time of the year,” says Anond Snidvongs, a professor in the science faculty at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. ‘’There are hills where I saw land used for agriculture and leaves in forests burning.”

What has exacerbated the situation is a steady current of cold air blowing down from China at night, he told IPS. ‘’The weather patterns have been unusual this year. There is a cool wind from China that has made the air more thick at night in places like Chiang Mai, making it difficult for the smoke to rise and spread out.”

Thailand, however, is not the only nation affected by this spreading cloud of pollution. There are similar scenarios in the northern borders of Burma and Laos, where the cold air currents from China have combined with fires on agricultural lands and bone-dry forests in north-eastern Burma and north-western Laos to blanket communities and the terrain in thick smoke.

This trans-boundary hazard has already prompted calls from the international environment group Greenpeace for a regional deal to stem its spread in the coming years. ‘’The (Thai) government should assess the environmental and economic damage caused by these forest fires and work out a collective forest fire prevention plan together with neighbouring countries, especially Laos, Myanmar (or Burma), Cambodia and China to avoid a repetition of this episode in the future,” the global environmental lobby said in a statement this week.

With the exception of China, the other countries do not have to look far for a model to follow, Tara Buakamsir, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace South-east Asia, said in an interview. ‘’ASEAN has a good document on controlling haze that is worth following,” he said, referring to this region’s premier economic and political bloc, the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The grouping, which marks its 40th anniversary this year, includes Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The annual haze problem from August through September has become a contentious issue, ever since major forest fires in the 1997-98 period affected the ASEAN nations located at its southern end. The past decade has seen a familiar pattern during these months, when hazardous smoke from forests burnt in the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra for agricultural purposes drift across Malaysia, Singapore and southern Thailand.

But the beginning of this month saw a breakthrough, when ASEAN agreed on a plan that will pool Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean resources to clear the air of the annual smog and haze. In addition, the group seeks to raise 500,000 US dollars for a new fund to control trans-boundary haze.

The groundwork for this success was prepared at a meeting of ASEAN environment ministers late last year, where the principle aim was to aid Indonesia deal with the endless forest fires in its backyard.

Previous attempts to get Jakarta to solve this environment hazard were met with a stock response – that Indonesia lacked resources and technical knowledge to contain the fires across its vast land mass.