Struggling to Breathe

Chiang Mai's air quality is the worst of the 100 cities of the world. Today, Friday, March 31 the smog is so bad I cannot see trees just at the other side of our orchard. At last, this has the attention of our Prime Minister. But he has, shall we give him the benefit of the doubt, been misinformed.

"People are not cooperating in reducing the burning of fields," the PM said in a March 30 article in The Nation. "Satellite images show ... thousands of hotspot fires as farmers clear their fields. My friend, Peay Tananone posted an even more dramatic image (attached to this essay) showing Laem Mountain in Nakhon Nayok as it was ablaze yesterday. However, later paragraphs of the newspaper article got down to facts. "Images from the Suomi satellite showed 2,870 hotspots burning across Thailand on Wednesday." Of these, 2,559 were in forests, "and 100 in agricultural areas."

So really, less than 3.5% of the fires were caused by farmers burning fields. 100 out of almost 3,000.

It is wrong to blame agricultural fires for Chiang Mai's terrible air quality. The PM is correct, no doubt, that "people are not cooperating...." Virtually all these fires are set by people. But it is not true that farmers "are not cooperating in reducing the burning of fields." The vast majority of farmers have been cooperating. The amount of voluntary cooperation is astounding. Nowhere around here are fields being burned.

Every year, voices from Bangkok scapegoat farmers. Don't insult us by saying this is not politically motivated.

The solution, of course, is another matter. 96% of Wednesday's fires were not being included in the PM's list of measures being undertaken by the government to reduce burning and improve air quality. Something needs to be done and it is not high enough on the government's list for the PM to mention it.

The general view is that those who set the fires do expect some sort of financial benefit. That is the incentive. So, there are two options: to reduce the incentive by imposing severe penalties, or to provide a greater incentive to do something else. Behavioral change must be incentivized.

Fifty years ago opium production was a great moneymaker for some hard-pressed people. It seemed impossible to change their way of making a living. But alternative crops have succeeded where police and military suppression hardly made a dent.

This kind of intervention can be done again. Solutions are not impossible.

We, the survivors who are struggling to breathe, are growing desperate.