BY JOCELYN ZHOU ’22
Just weeks after the height of the Amazon rainforest fire that spread across South America and continues to burn, Indonesia is now also undergoing a massive forest fire. The fire, ravaging the country since July has destroyed 800,000 acres of land, endangering wildlife and people with toxic smoke clouds and posing great potential danger to the agricultural economy.
Animal habitats burned across both Borneo and the island of Sumatra, home to endangered species such as the orangutan. Meanwhile, human residents are suffering in the polluted air.
Forest fires take place annually in the dry season in Indonesia. However, this fire has been worse than previous years as this year has been extremely dry.
Palm oil farming and production is at fault for this massive fire. According to the New York Times, “80 percent of the fire was set intentionally to clear lands for making palm oil.
Yi An ’22, a geography major, said, “Indonesia is a developing country. It mainly focuses on economic development, rather than environmental protection ... this never means harming the environment is right.”
The cause of the fire is similar to that of the Amazon fire which ravaged 2 million acres, causing irrevocable damage to the forest. Both of the fires contribute to climate change by emitting excessive amounts of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere and by destroying vegetation that could absorb the gas.
“Although the sawdust left by the burning trees might do good to the soil ... there should be more harm than good since the fire itself hurts the overall ecosystem, which is unrecoverable. If the government doesn’t take action to stop the fire, the fire will continuously intensify global warming and pollute the air of Indonesia and its neighbors,” Suri Sun ’22, an environmental studies major, said.
Indeed, the air quality has gotten worse in Indonesia and in neighboring countries, and the toxic smoke has long-lasting effects on residents.
According to the Washington Post, “Malaysia, one of the neighboring countries of Indonesia, shut down hundreds of schools in response to the pollution. Last week the country distributed 500,000 face masks as a thick smog hung in the air.”
On Sept. 17, in response to the fire, the Indonesian President Joko Widodo visited an area of Sumatra and prayed for rain.
According to the New York Times, “The [Indonesian] president said 52 firefighting aircraft had been deployed in the fire zones in Kalimantan and Sumatra, roughly one for every 26 of the hot spots identified there.”
However, the fire is still not easy to bring under control.
“The government of Indonesia should try its best to stop the fire, but I hope other countries could also pay attention to the fire and offer help,” An said. “ It’s costly for a developing country to do that. Developed countries and organizations like the UN should help it. There is only one Earth for all of us to live on, and the resources are limited for everyone, so we should all have the responsibility to protect our environment.”