Once the full monsoon rains come to a dark, smoky Indonesia, the people will dance in the hosed-down streets and everyone will breathe a sigh of relief. Yet that may be when the real trouble begins.
The short-term health effects of the huge forest fires that have been burning across Kalimantan and Sumatra for three months are troubling enough. A private air pollution analysis - the first known to have been made public in Indonesia - in the worst-hit province, Jambi in Sumatra, showed particle levels 50 times that considered safe in Britain and about 20 times that of the World Health Organisation and the United States. It was nearly four times the level Malaysia considers 'extremely hazardous' and more than twice the highest level observed in Kuching, the worst-hit town in East Malaysia.
Rough calculations by the Post based on these figures indicate a possible long-term death tally of a few hundred a day across Indonesia if other factors are taken into account. But the potential long-term consequences of land loss, harvest collapse and economic disaster stretch to a national, regional and ultimately even global catastrophe.
Meinrat Andreae is used to forest fires. Based at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, he leads a world team of scientists funded by the European Union to study the climatic effects of the enormous greenery burning that happens globally each year. He says the Indonesian Government should be more worried about next year than this.
'Tens or hundreds of people may die from respiratory disease, but a much larger number of people may starve because they can't feed themselves.' Public outcry means Indonesia is unlikely to allow its people to go hungry. But to prevent it, the Government may be forced to import huge amounts of rice that will drive up inflation and sink millions of the country's hard-pressed population of 200 million deeper into poverty.
Indonesia's fires are thought to be burning over between 800,000 and 1.5 million hectares - an area equivalent to between three and five Hong Kongs. It is an annual exercise - the Government has said it will set up palm-oil plantations of 600,000 ha every year, most of which will require burning to make the space. Every year, Africa and the Amazon in South America burn a swathe of between 200 and 1,000 times that size.
Yet whereas Africa burns mainly grasses, Indonesia is losing valuable tropical trees and peat - and that acts as the country's hidden water reservoir and the rice paddies' lifeline, says Dennis Dykstra, deputy director-general of research at the Centre for International Forestry Research based in West Java.
