“The
industrial world destroys nature not because it doesn’t love it but because it
is not afraid of it.”
- Mary Ruefle,
American Poet
Most of the
major catastrophes we read about, think about and worry about are natural
occurrences: hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions.
But man-made catastrophes do their own share of damage. When they strike,
they often grab their own share of attention. The 9/11 terrorist attack
stands as one of the largest insurance catastrophes in history – not to mention
its far more devastating human impact. But most man-made catastrophes
are smaller in scale compared to what mother nature can deliver. They can
also stay under the radar, without headlines, without clear cause and effect,
without a clearly defined impact. They can be harder to trace and harder
to quantify. When an earthquake strikes, the resulting damage is apparent
and the cause and effect are obvious. Not always so with man-made events.
Case in
point: in 2015, forest fires and resulting haze in Southeast Asia were
unusually widespread and extreme, and researchers this week released a study
finding an incredible death toll: “The forest
fire and haze disaster in Southeast Asia last year may have led to the
deaths of more than 100,000 people,” the
New York Times reported. “The vast majority of the cases were in Indonesia, where fires
were deliberately set to clear land for agriculture.” In 2015, the
Indonesian government claimed only 19 of its citizens had perished due
to the fires and haze. The report released this week finds a much higher
figure: 91,600 in Indonesia alone.
The study was published in Environmental
Research Letters. The study’s authors explained the root cause of the
fires in 2015 and the resulting impact on human life:
Across Indonesia, fires are frequently used to burn agricultural
residue, clear forest, or prepare land for plantations and smallholder farms. .
. . Fire emission levels are greatest from degraded peatlands,
especially in dry years (Marlier et
al 2015a, 2015b). In 2006, burning in industrial concessions
to clear land for oil palm and timber plantations accounted for ~40% of total
fire emissions in Sumatra and ~25% in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) (Marlier et al 2015c).
*
* *
The degraded peatlands that typically burn during such episodes
contain significant combustible organic material and so release large amounts
of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), the leading cause of global
pollution-related mortality (World Health Organization 2009, Lelieveld et
al 2015). As in previous episodes, the prevailing
winds in 2015 transported the smoke to densely populated areas across Indonesia
and the Malay Peninsula, including Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
Did
most of us hear, in 2015, about the fires, the smoke, and the heavy presence of
deadly particulate matter in population centers in Southeast Asia? Did we
hear that deaths were mounting, in the tens of thousands and as many as a
hundred thousand? No. Nor, apparently, was that reality recognized
anywhere before the release of the study in Environmental Research
Letters.
Similarly,
the predictions of dire consequences for life and property as a result of
Climate Change relate not only to high profile catastrophic events – like
stronger and more frequent hurricanes – but to the more insidious long-term
effects, including slowly rising seas, widespread droughts, and extremes of
temperature, all of which cause death and damage that are not as visibly and
obviously connected to the “catastrophe.” But to the victims, the results
are just as final.
Posted by Dan Millea
