"Indonesia's huge fires and toxic haze will cause health problems for years to come", 7 October 2019

Wildfires and haze are not uncommon in Indonesia. [...]

Partly, this is because the amount of land devoted to commercial production has steadily increased. Carbon-rich peatland forests on the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan have been extensively cleared to create new plantations, often to produce palm oil. Weak land tenure security has also led to conflicts between local communities and plantation companies, where burning land has become a weapon to exercise pressure. All this has been exacerbated by the El Niño weather phenomenon which in some years has caused extraordinarily dry conditions.

[...]This year’s fires have been indeed the worst since 2015.... But exposure to the wildfires and their subsequent toxic smoke also causes short and long-term damage to human lives.

[...]

Various researchers have analysed data from population surveys taken during and after the fires, and found that the smoke generated by the fires harmed adult health and child survival rates at the time, and led to lower health and educational achievements in the longer-term.

[...]

It is not yet clear whether 2019's fires will reach the scale of the disasters seen in 1997 or 2015. But these studies all imply that exposure to the wildfires entails a real risk for human well-being. Previous generations of Indonesian children paid the price – if we are to ensure today's children don't suffer similar problems, then action needs to be taken to protect the most vulnerable.