Will we see a return of the haze this year?

then again, in 2019. The question on our minds will this year be just as bad with me to answer that and to talk about everything else. Hayworth is Associate Professor Simon Tate. He is the chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs Professor. Welcome to the climate conversations. How are you today? Surprised by that big haze announcement in Singapore. Sadly not, we've been expecting it because all our research shows quite similar signs. It's going to be drier than

the last three years, that's for sure. And now could it be a full blow? And Nino predictions have gone from about 60% just a month ago to about 80%. The weather is really in God's control. It's not for human beings, but there are things we can do but governments have to be center of action.

Ok. Now, the thing is we are a little confused as, you know, sort of regular people because I mean, we've been reading that, yeah, there's El Nino but then suddenly it's connected to haze and then it becomes a bit of an alarm and then you look out the window, the skies are really clear. Air quality seems fine. People are even being asked like, are you going to be stuck up in 95 masks? Not really, not many people are perturbed. So this is all a little sudden,

I have to say for the average person. Yes, it is. I think for the average person, the weather it seems like here and now. But of course, there is always an effort to look ahead. So the good outcome for any early warning is not to have the problem. Now, if you check it more carefully,

we've really seen warning signs already emerged. It's isolated problems like the heat spells, we all feel that, that it creates drier weather and if it is a prolonged and deeper drought, then there could be fires and there have been fires in our region and heat spells. And up north in Indo China, Thailand, they've had fires and there have been warning signs of fires. Now in Malaysia, not yet Indonesia, but the Malaysian Minister has said there is a risk of haze.

And in Indonesia, President Jo Kui has also sent an early signal to warn his local officials in the areas just south of us that he will not tolerate Pfizer haze. So our region is likely to experience a much drier weather in the coming months, not immediately in the next few weeks, but in the coming months, it will deepen and that's where the risk will be. So it sounds like it's creeping closer and closer to Singapore. You were talking about Indochina and then it seems to be creeping south and

does come back to Singapore this year. How do you suppose it will compare with the choking haze of 2015 or even 2019? Well, I think there is some relatively good news in 2015 in 2013 longer back there weren't really strong systems in place to try to suppress or even better, still prevent fires while whether possible El Nino

is the main worry. It's not fatalistic. Right. I mean, there are things that men, women operations and governments can do and so there is a prospect that it won't be as bad as 2015, but that's not complacency. That's really a call for action that the systems that we put in place has to be double checked to make sure they're working. It's like any fire prevention, right? Once in a while, you got to pick up those fire canisters and see, is there stuff still in there in case the fire goes off and

that's kind of how we need to approach it. Now, it's good that the government of Indonesia, Malaysia and our own all take this seriously. All right. And you talked about the system systems in place. Do you mind going through them with us? And how often are they really checked? And what really are? I don't know the key points to understand whether they still work or not. Yes, I think there's always some skepticism about how thoroughly any government can implement a decision.

And of course, when the case of Indonesia will be such a large bowling archipelago, it's going to be hard to imagine that a rule set in Jakarta in some ministry can really have effect on the ground. And with this year elections coming up, there have been records in the past that local officials will tend to let small holders and small companies kind of clear more land as a kind of bonus to them to curry favor. But I must credit the Indonesian government and especially President

Jokowi for doing things that nobody has before. In fact, stopping the haze ending the fires for the sake of Indonesian people is really a hallmark of his administration these last few years. That's one reason why we've had kind of a blue sky amnesia. We've forgotten what the haze was like way back when I just

wanted to add in as well. I mean, he once famously put out, I suppose almost his phone number personally for people to report if there was a haze situation and he talked about how embarrassing it was that his country might have been the cause of this situation. Yes, he's actually been to fire regions during the fires. And he's understood that when fires happen in Indonesia, it's actually the Indonesians who suffer the most. We like second hand smokers.

It's bad, but it's not like being right next to the fire in fear of your life. And people Indonesia have died, Children have died from past bad fires in 2019 and 2015. Now this is the last few 18 months or so of his government and really his changes, I hope will outlive him and really be that legacy, for example, the president actually oversees law enforcement platforms. You know, he has almost daily call with a lot of the military and provincial officials outside Jakarta to make

sure this is actually happening. Secondly, his Minister for Environment and Forest City, no Baa has actually investigated and taken legal action against the bad companies linked to the fire. So really compared to the past, people are being prosecuted institutionally, Indonesia has also created things like the Peatland and Mangrove restoration Agency. Now that sounds like a green gang. But really a lot of the worst haze comes from fires on peatland.

They kind of different kind of soil that has a way of small rain and issuing a lot of soot haze and of course CO2 gasses, but you talked about elections coming up as well. If President Jokowi has done very well, should we be concerned that should there be an administration change? Things in the

future might be a little bit questionable. Well, I think if, when it changes, because President Jokowi has run out of his two terms, there will be lots of changes and this is one area to watch, but I'm confident that Indonesia has made pledges internationally, not just to ASEAN in the region, but in global terms, its Paris Agreement on climate change have really made Indonesia pledge against deforestation against increasing its CO2 emissions.

And so these pledges internationally will create a pressure on any person coming in to fulfill more than that Indonesia has really shifted from seeing, you know, let's use the land no matter how we clear it to let's not clear the land, if possible, let's produce more crops, more products activity. So it's deforestation rates have actually come down compared to like Brazil. This is a great accomplishment. And additionally, you can see opportunities for investment. You know, we all

talk about carbon credits conservation projects. Now, if Indonesia can conserve projects and improve the world, it's sequestering carbon locking it in, there's money to be made. There are a number of projects already running in Kalimantan, which used to be very fire prone and these projects are successfully conserving land, helping local communities and of course, selling carbon credits to international companies,

Shell and a number of other really global players. Well, like you say, it's possibly his lasting legacy and hopefully something that will be brought forward to future administrations and generations. But Indonesia's side, let's talk about every other country here in ASEAN. I mean, we've got Malaysia, they are spots in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar as well. How close are we to getting a regional understanding and a regional

ability to work together to fight haze? Yes, I think first we have tended to see the southern haze which we were talking about mainly from Indonesia and sometimes from East Malaysia, separately from the northeast Asian haze coming from Myanmar, Thailand and that in the Chinese area. Now there was a plan after 2020 for haze free ASEAN. And I guess because we had so little haze in the last few years, that's gone a bit quiet now with 2023. So we kind of need a new plan.

One very simple thing is to make a very uniform system of measurement so that we know what levels of haze we're seeing across the board. And how far away are we from that? Like any open negotiation, there will be some officials, they need to work through details that we'll have to see. And I admit that sometimes if I'm Indonesian, I always feel that I'm in the bad boy box. So we've got to find a way from moving from finger pointing to kind

of cooperation. I don't mean to mean soft cooperation, I mean, really practical work together and that's still take us beyond government. I think one of the major factors that's improved and gives me hope really it will be about the companies, corporate behavior is critical, like in anything to do with climate and environment, governments can do their share, they must,

citizens must. But Corporates who run the plantation sector who buy and sell the goods that come out of the crops associated with the haze, they have to do their part too. There was a time in the middle of last year when it seemed that the China we are familiar with was a completely different place when the rest of the world moved on from the COVID-19 pandemic. As many as 300 million Chinese people were under some form of a mandatory lockdown.

There were only two things on my mind to find food and to not go crazy. Then suddenly the people decided to take things into their own hands. For the first time in more than 30 years, protests swept through China and just like that zero cove ended. Join me. We do for a look back at the extraordinary year in China and hear how it might have changed the country for good.

Catch a red wall inside China's Zero COVID World A two part podcast series by CN A. It's available now on the CN A and me listen apps, Spotify, Apple and Google podcasts. Some people though say that the story of getting the measurement standardized is actually low hanging fruit other than corporations, other than what the government must do urgently. What about people? How can they enforce change? Do you think? Well, first I have no problems with low hanging fruit. That's probably

the right person. And before they go back on the tree, we should eat them because that is a way of really creating that sense of win and cooperation. And I would say that citizens and companies come together, you know, I mean, why are companies behaving better because consumers demanded they are seeing consumer boycotts especially in the West. But when we had the haze here, some years ago, there were products there was a toilet paper boycott, wasn't there. Yeah. And NTUC, one of the

biggest chains took it off the shelves. This had an impact. The companies protested their innocence but they then had to make forward looking plans and pledges that this won't happen again. And by and large, the soy and I have learned to work with these companies not to let them green wash us, but we need to look at their plans, their commitments of money for firefighting, fire prevention. We've also been out to some of these vast plantations.

The plantations are size of Singapore, one plantation and the villages that around them depend so much on the economy that's created by these plantations in Singapore. As an urban city. We have to understand the perspective and then try to cooperate with them, not to excuse them, but it hurts them as well. So I've met villagers who are really sad when this happen because we can lock up ourselves. We can buy the N95 mask. We can have air purifiers. These guys walk

around the streets with handkerchiefs over their faces. So it's really a problem that motivate people from all walks to work together. That's why we've been working with a lot of NGO S in Indonesia, the non government organizations that try to defend the citizens rights. Indonesia. Yeah, it's nice to know you've been to the oil plantations. I just want to bring up the fact that the Eu has agreed on a

new regulation which bans the sale of palm oil. Now, the commodities linked to deforest and it's Indonesia and Malaysia that suffer the most when it comes to this. This is just one sort of issue really to complicate this whole story of haze, isn't it? It is. In fact, that issue will be something we are discussing at our conference on the ninth of June because we're bringing people down from the up commission to really help explain this imposition of European views on our region.

The Malaysians and Indonesian governments have protested it. But partly I hoping that a positive dialogue can emerge out of this because actually the European rules really talk about deforestation after 2020. And as I said earlier, most of Indonesia today is not seeing deforestation anymore. It's kind of like signaling a problem that's already passed. And therefore even the

Europeans have been accused of colonial mentality, et cetera. I think the Indonesians and Malaysian actually are doing it for their own sake, their own people. I'm hoping that this dialogue which has been rather loud and nationalistic will in Singapore take a step forward to becoming something more cooperative and understanding of each other. All right, I want to talk a little bit about technology. It's very clear that back in 2015 when we were hit with the haze,

we weren't prepared. And then now it's still the story of N95 masks and air filters. Do you think technology has actually progressed from then to now. I mean, what new things can we do as average people to fight the haze other than the masks and to try and air filters? Well, that's the thing, you know, just like if the climate change in the world happens, there's just

so much the individual citizen can do. So I think the answer is really to act proactively to prevent the haze and their technology has helped today, we publish a haze outlook every year for the last five years. And we're not just sticking our finger in the wind to see what the weather is, the weather prediction and the rainfall calculation and the monitoring of plantations and peatlands. This has all been improved by remote sensing.

There are attempts to move the big plantation companies to using drones to monitor their lands for fires but also dry conditions and to act preventively where some of the concern is, of course, the small holders, they don't have the resources, they will be much more fire at risk. And in between them, there are middle sized companies which should take on these new duties and new measures, but

they're kind of not bothering. There's always some good companies and in the millions people who do palm oil and pulp and paper, they're going to be some bad companies. And I think that's where the risk of the El Nino comes in because even if you're a good company and you take care of your own land. If there are really dry conditions, a fire could start elsewhere and jump into your land and once it gets going, they are very, very hard

to stop. Yeah, I remember that phenomenon from the nineties. Yeah, but it's nice to know of the new technologies and thank you for laying them out for us. You are really the wise man of Hayes. I mean, you've been working on solutions to tackle this since your son was born in 1997. Uh It's a bit of a journey. So what would you say are the biggest lessons for you through all this time in working on solutions to tackle haze? I think in a way, climate haze, they

can't be the concerns of rich urban people. Like most of Singapore, we really have to be empathetic and cooperative. We live in a region of great contrast and we don't use our levers. Now we are a rich hub. We have influence on investment.

We bring our finance over the last 56 years, the soI A and I helped write the first survey of green finance in Singapore, partly so that in this sector, the plantation companies are held accountable, not just by citizens, not buyers and sellers, but by their bankers today esg environment, social and governance issues are now part of the package of what we assess creditworthiness, not just can you make money,

but can you at the same time? Not do dumb stuff like burn your lands or cause harm to people through the haze. Just before we go, the young Children, the adults, the elderly who may be more susceptible to haze. Do you have a word or two? When it comes to advice about how to manage the haze and their conditions before things get serious for them? Well, it has been, I've been working on this issue a long time as a lawyer and chairman of the Institute, there are things

I know, I don't know. One of them is medical. I think that's where people living in Singapore will have to tolerate the problem if it arises and listen to the government because the government has taken care of them. Now, I wish the same care could be given to the people in the islands

south of us. If the fires break up there or in Kalimantan, I would rather be here than in those villages so close to the fire and without the hospital and other medical care that Singaporeans will get, like you say, handkerchiefs are their best defense. Thank you so much for the caring concern and raising the whole story about how the story of Hayes is not just about us here in Pore, but everywhere else you take care. Thank you man.

Thanks as ever to my guest associate Professor Simon Tay and to you for tuning in to the climate conversations. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Do remember you've got to subscribe if you'd like to hear more and if you like this podcast and that's when you'll also know when a new episode drops, you can find nes climate and sustainability coverage online at Cne dot Asia. And of course, it's not just me, I'm here just doing the talking, but the team behind this podcast, Joanne Chancy,

Jacqueline Chan and Christina Robert. Thank you guys. I'm Yasmine signing off.