The Hindu : The cloud over Asia

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 17, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

The cloud over Asia

THE PRELIMINARY FINDINGS of the United Nations-sponsored study of the Asian haze — easily the most extensive inquiry conducted into this phenomenon — are truly alarming. A report based on the five-year research study, which was overseen by the U.N. Environment Programme and which included contributions from more than 200 scientists, warns that a thick and toxic blanket of pollution hangs over much of South Asia. It holds the "Asian Brown Cloud" responsible for a virtual inventory of problems in the region — among them drought, floods, sunlight reduction, acid rain and mass-scale respiratory diseases. Moreover, it claims that the cloud (a noxious mixture of ash, soot, aerosols and other particles), is slowly spreading across the whole Asian continent and could have an impact on the climate all around the world.

Over the past few years, the extent of the smog — particularly over the Indian Ocean — has startled scientists. What the recent report suggests is that the haze, which fluctuates and reaches its peak in the month of January, is even bigger and much more dangerous than believed before. The study also suggests that dirty or polluting industries (which are often singled out as the chief environmental culprits) are not the sole causes for the haze. Rather, the haze is equally a result of low-tech pollution — forest fires, clearing vegetation by burning and the use of cooking fuels such as cowdung and kerosene. The link between forest fires/vegetation clearing and the haze came to the world's attention in a dramatic manner a few years ago, when clouds of acrid dust and smoke covered Malaysia, Singapore and parts of Thailand and the Philippines. The smog was traced to the timber and plantation companies of Indonesia, which cleared land by burning in order to expand plantations of timber, rubber, palm oil and other cash crops. But the Asian Brown Cloud is not a result of slash and burn methods alone and it is the two countries which have large populations (China and India) which are responsible for the bulk of the emissions.

To gauge the accurate environmental impact of a contaminated blanket of the thickness and spread of the Asian Brown Cloud would require much more study. But scientists associated with the research project suggest that the consequences are already extremely serious. They include mass-scale respiratory deaths (which already number a staggering two million annually in India alone, according to one estimate) and the drastically altered rainfall patterns over South Asia over the past few years (which have been responsible for the floods in Bangladesh and Nepal and the drought in Pakistan and northwestern India). The impact of the Asian Brown Cloud on other parts of the world is not clear and the impact of it on global warming is something that requires to be studied further.

In a way, the only silver lining in this noxious cloud of pollution is that it is largely manmade — at least 80 per cent of it stems from one activity of man or another, according to scientists. This provides the hope that it can be undone by the adoption of a number of environment-friendly measures. These would include steps to prevent the occurrence and spread of forest fires, steps to prevent land being cleared by burning and by switching to cleaner and more efficient sources of energy. The Asian Brown Cloud is partly a result of the momentum of development. The problem will not vanish overnight but it is one — as other countries have shown on the air pollution front — that can be tackled. It is not an easy task to strike a balance between development and the environment. However, at the same time, it is imperative that the demands of the former keep pace with the requirements of the latter.

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