Transcript
A Danger to Our Living Environment
When we talk about living environment, our minds go towards an environment, an external surroundings in which a living being lives. It is obvious that a living environment for humans, animals, and plants have to be able to provide for them. It has to have physical, chemical and other natural forces. It also has non living beings in it. Things such as clean air, soil, minerals and water are also the conditions of a living environment in order for living things to survive. These factors help sustain and maintain life and help them survive.
Recently as of the summer of 2019, Indonesia has experienced several problems that may affect and give significant damage to our living environment. Indonesia is currently experiencing extreme sudden forest fires. As of September of 2019, the damage of these forest fires has reached nearly 900,000 hectares. Over 600,000 of those being from forest fires on mineral filled lands and the rest from peats or turfs. It is said that some of the causes of these forest fires would be companies and individuals burning up forests and healthy fields in order to create more land for construction, or to open farming fields. The opening of farming fields by burning forests seem pointless, as soil that has been burnt usually cannot sustain life as well as healthy soil.
Other than the health of the soil, the burning of forests to create more land causes a lot of other bad damages. The fire would kill all of the living beings living in it, like all plants and animals. This causes a loss of biodiversity. Not to mention, this causes erosion to happen as the soil is exposed due to being deprived of plants. Plants and animals being killed will also cause them to be endangered and more dangerously extinct. Some endangered animals that are in danger due to these forest fires are the giant armadillo, giant anteater, etc.
These forest fires also cause water pollution, also causes smoke and ashes to cloud over the skies, causing heavy air pollution. These clouds of smoke contains highly dangerous chemicals that may harm any living being near it. This is what Indonesia has been suffering from. Due to the recent forest fires happening in areas such as Riau, Palembang, Jambi ( all provinces in Sumatra / ????) and also in the West, South and Central Kalimantan (provinces in Kalimantan / ????). These areas have experienced up to 350 hotspots of forest fires.
The effects of these forest fires affects a lot of areas near the hotspots, some even reaching to other islands. These fires created a smog, a fog that is filled with tiny dust particles that contained ashes and poisonous chemicals in it. These smog covered the whole of South Sumatra, and caused the air quality of South Sumatra to worsen. Areas such as Kepulauan Riau got not only the smog from Sumatra’s forest fires, but also from Kalimantan’s. The PM10 indicator even stated that the concentration of the air reached 276,54 micrograms/meter.
Even worse news, it was stated that the smog caused by these forest fires has reached neighboring countries in South East Asia such as Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, etc. with Malaysia being affected the most since it is the closest to Indonesia. Thailand experienced about 100 micrograms/meter of smog which was twice their normal standard. People were forced to wear masks while walking around everyday. Around 1200 schools in Malaysia were forced to shut down temporarily because the smog was too dangerous for children to be around. They had to stay at home and take care of their health.
This problem has been going on for months. A lot has been done to combat these fires, such as giving punishments to those caught starting the fires. Another solution would be water bombing, which is throwing a water bomb through a special helicopter. But water bombing was a bit of a waste of water. And because the rainy season is coming soon, hopefully the rain will lessen the forest fires and help reduce smog.
