October break was a good time for our school. It allowed us to slow down, take our minds off of school, and to see some amazing sights. But for those who went to Southern Thailand or any Asian countries near by. Those countries were swallowed by the smoke coming from the Indonesian fires. Known for being an expert on the subject, high school science teacher Mr. Smith sat down with me and was able to provide some very interesting information.

How did these fires start, and why did they start? “The Sumatra and Kalimantan fires in Indonesia have been going on for years now. Traditionally, it has been a seasonal thing. It started long ago during dry seasons. Farmers light their fields, like they do here in Thailand. We do it in April, as Thailand is very hot in April, but in Indonesia the dry season is now. Recently there has been a huge push internationally for palm oil, so the Indonesian government has decided that they want to become the world’s dominant palm oil producer. What is happening now in Indonesia is that they are deforesting the natural rain forest and making room for palm oil plantations. The vast majority is agreed by most scientists to be from palm oil deforestations.”

What effect does this have on other countries in Asia, and also Internationally? “It’s all horrible. The Guardian paper in the United Kingdom reported how certain member states have called this a crime against humanity. It is no longer just an inconvenience. People are dying in record numbers. Nobody has any strict data but the smoke is so intense in some nations that some people are just simply not making it through this event. Usually a healthy young person can make it through, but if you are old and very weak, this could take you up. So these fires are happening in Indonesia, but the winds will take the smoke over to Malaysia and Singapore, and those are the two countries that are heavily hit. Malaysia and Singapore are both experiencing air pollution worse than China. They have had to cancel flights, events, and hundreds of schools. But this week is better. I have been tracking the air pollution every single day. The air is actually okay, which means the winds have shifted, though the fires have not been put out. They are going to be going on for weeks, and so it is just a matter of which direction the wind blows. The smoke also hit Thailand, mostly southern. I was in Krabi and the haze was so bad, it was worse than Shanghai. I have a house right on the beach, and I can see the islands right next to me, beautiful islands, and I couldn’t see a thing that whole week. It was just grey, awful, my eyes were burning. If I didn’t have business down there, I would have got up and left. A lot of tourist were leaving, so it had a huge economic impact as well.”

Will this be a difficult situation in the future, or is this just a problem that will wear off? “There is still quite a bit of rainforest left. Some of the most amazing rainforests in the world, and the goal is to wipe it out and replace it with palm oil. Thailand wiped out its rainforest a long time ago, as Southern Thailand used to be all rainforest, but now if you go down their 99% of it is gone, and replaced with palm oil. That was thirty years ago, and we don’t notice the effects of this because it happened so long ago. You can say with pretty high confidence that things are going to get worse before things get better. So when the rainforest is entirely gone, like Malaysia who has already wiped out its entire rainforest a long ago, then what happens is there will be less smoke because it is just the agricultural burning. I don’t think anyone has any clue how long this is going to be. It could be a matter of years, a couple of decades, but unless heavy international pressure gets put on the Indonesian government, they’ll continue to get rid of the rainforests in favour of the palm oil.”

Going into this interview, I didn’t have too much background information on the situation, but after talking with Mr. Smith, I learned a lot more that I knew before, and you might have learned a lot more about this too after reading. Whether you are reading this as an ISB student, or from a different school in one of the places I mentioned earlier, know that things have gotten better, and that conditions are looking a lot healthier than weeks ago.

Jack D