‘Looks like Mars’: Toxic smog from Indonesia wildfires sparks health crisis, protests

Almost every day for months, Indonesian schoolteacher Natanael Undas has gazed up at smoke-filled skies in apocalyptic shades of yellow and orange. “It looks like Mars, like we’re living on another planet,” said Undas, whose home in central Kalimantan province is at the heart of devastating wildfires generating toxic smog in Indonesia and across Southeast Asia. Although his family keeps the windows shut at all times, the noxious smoke penetrates the house anyway, sending Undas’ 2-year-old daughter into constant sneezing fits amid a spike in respiratory illnesses in haze-affected regions.

Wildfires are nothing new in Indonesia, whose forests and peatlands are set ablaze each year as family and commercial farms clear land using traditional “slash and burn” methods. But the fires this year are far worse than usual, said Undas, who has been documenting Indonesia’s air quality on Instagram since 2014, as heat and drought aggravated by a “super” El Niño weather pattern make this the country’s worst fire season in over a decade.

The unrelenting haze from the fires has affected millions of people in the region since they started in July, closing schools in multiple countries and spurring arguments about who is to blame. Indonesian protesters have accused their government of insufficient action, while other countries are threatening prosecution. On Wednesday, hundreds of Indonesian students and members of civil society groups protested in the capital, Jakarta, and other cities against the policies of President Prabowo Subianto, including his resistance to declaring the fires a national disaster.

“We want transparent and independent investigations about these wildfires,” protester Natasha Ruvantina told NBC News. “And also, we want a long-term prevention strategy.” The Indonesian government said in a statement Wednesday that it recognized the students’ concerns, adding that it was prosecuting companies linked to the fires and sending aid to affected provinces. The fires have also caused frustration in countries such as neighboring Singapore, where air pollution this month reached its highest level since 2015, when Indonesian wildfires were also intensified by El Niño. Singapore officials have threatened to prosecute companies seen as responsible for the devastation, and on Tuesday the foreign ministers of Singapore and Indonesia said they were considering a joint task force to combat illegal land burning.

“We will use the full force of the law to make sure those who profit from fire must answer for the fires,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Arrmanatha Nasir said. Indonesia’s neighbors and other countries have been accused of contributing to the problem. In a report this month, the Indonesian environmental organization Walhi named 66 companies with links to Singapore and 27 companies with links to Malaysia that it said were associated with fire hot spots.

On Thursday, the Indonesian government said police had identified 20 corporations suspected of being involved in the fires, including four from Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea. The Malaysian government has denied that any Malaysian companies are involved, while the government of Singapore did not respond to a request for comment. Even as fingers are pointed across borders, the fires have been causing disruptions across the region, even threatening 67,000-year-old cave paintings on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi that are the oldest in the world.

The haze also marred Singapore’s annual Formula One night race this month, obscuring the city’s iconic skyline during the globally watched event. “The biggest issue is a change in the quality of life,” Rajasekhar Balasubramanian, an engineering professor at the National University of Singapore, said of the haze. “People who usually participate in outdoor activities, for example, doing some kind of physical exercise, cannot do it anymore,” he said.

A Singapore-focused study published in September found that short-term increases in airborne fine particulate matter were associated with increased emergency department visits for asthma and other chronic respiratory illnesses. According to the study, spikes in such visits in 2016 and 2019 coincided with periods of haze caused by Indonesian wildfires. In Indonesia, more than 283,000 cases of respiratory illness linked to the current fires had been reported in seven provinces as of Oct. 13, more than double the 113,000 cases reported as of Sept. 9, Reuters reported, citing Health Ministry data.

Adeline Tong, a civil engineer in Singapore, said that the recent haze had brought back her long-dormant asthma and that if she goes outside without an N95 mask, “I will feel like I need my inhaler.” “Just two days ago, I could not even see the condo next to mine. It disappeared because the visibility was so bad,” she said in an interview on Oct. 21. While Tong is able to work remotely, she said the haze has affected her social life, discouraging her from meeting friends at the outdoor food courts and hawker stalls that are ubiquitous in Singapore.

It has also affected her as a competitive ballroom dancer, she said. “I usually would run outside to train, but now I can’t do that because the outside air will make me feel worse and the gyms are so crowded now because no one is outside,” she said. For many others — including the scores of Indigenous tribes living in Borneo, an island divided among Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei where the fires are concentrated — staying indoors isn’t an option.

Molly Wang and Marianna Madun are Penans, a seminomadic, hunter-gatherer tribe indigenous to Sarawak, a Malaysian state in Borneo near the fires in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island. They live in a village of around 150 people in Sarawak’s Baram region, where they weave baskets and bags for a living. Wang said the fires and smoke had sent animals running deeper into the jungle, making it harder for the community to hunt, while Madun said gathering food had been difficult because the smoke irritates her eyes.

The community has also paused traditional slash-and-burn farming techniques to avoid adding more smoke to the air. Wang said that while she doesn’t feel major health effects, older community members have been coughing and having trouble breathing; the closest clinic is an hour away by motorbike. Despite deploying thousands of personnel, Indonesia has struggled to quell the fires, which include vegetation fires above ground, as well as peat fires below.

Peat fires “are very difficult to put out and continue to smolder for ages,” Balasubramanian said. “So when you have ripe, dry conditions, a small little incident could ignite wildfires above the surface, and it’s very hard to control.” Though the fires are expected to continue into early November because of a delayed rainy season, smaller showers this week have brought some relief, with firefighters in Indonesia dancing in delight and residents across the region celebrating the first “blue sky” days in weeks.

“Finally, the rain comes,” Undas said.