I arrived in Singapore two weeks ago, landing in a cloud of haze. For the last two months, my business school classmates in Southeast Asia’s leading financial center have not seen the blue sky and have been warned not to spend time outside, as the haze can get so heavy that breathing becomes dangerous. When they do go outside, they wear masks.
The same haze hangs over Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and an ever-growing swath of the region — and it has been happening annually. This year, it has reached record levels of pollution because of El Niño and the resulting delay in the rainy season.
This crisis has received too little attention in the Western media. How could something that has been affecting the health and well-being of such a large portion of the world’s population every year not have made international news until just this week? Especially given that this is an environmental catastrophe to which Western companies have contributed?
Palm oil lies at the root of the problem. Palm oil is in so many products we consume and use that it is nearly unavoidable. Western companies such as Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and Unilever are part of a supply chain of producers growing, harvesting and processing palm oil into toiletries, food products and fuel used daily in the United States and other countries. This palm oil comes primarily from Indonesia, where over half the world’s oil palm fruit is grown.
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