ANTIDOTE The worst haze on record was in Sarawak, in 1997. Even Sarawak's famously wealthy chief minister, Abdul Taib Mahmud, could not buy a breath of fresh air, so he went abroad on "research". The Air Pollution Index (API) in Kuching that September was 860, higher than the 750 recorded in Muar on June 23.

We have shared memories of motorcyclists with towels around their faces, or of drivers going at snail's pace, with headlights on at noon, and windscreen wipers going, furiously and uselessly. Malaysians without access to private jets and Canadian mansions suffered, then as now, from asthma, choking, and red eyes.

NONEWe have endured this unnatural disaster every year, with API peaks in 2005, and now 2013. We may never know the number of Malaysians killed by the haze, since our medical statistics are poorly kept.

However, Narayan Sastry, an American academician writing in the journal Demography, observed a 22 percent increase in all-cause mortality on the day following a high pollution day, in affected Malaysian urban centres.

The study noted "this effect was persistent; it was not simply a moving forward of deaths by a couple of days (a ‘harvesting' effect)".

In Kuching, deaths recorded from all causes leapt from the average of 2.5 daily, to 33 on a day when the visibility was less than 1.1 kilometres. In Kuala Lumpur, among the most vulnerable people - infants and those aged 65 to 74 - deaths shot up by 60 to 70 percent the day after a high pollution day.

Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj, a chest physician and MP for Sungai Siput, has warned that "some of the small particles actually lodge deep in the lungs and stay there for years. Depending on their chemical nature, they can cause damage to the delicate alveoli and even cancer in the long run".

The burning question of blame

Malaysia's poor governance has been emphasised in this crisis. Our leaders have been obsessed with giving and receiving face, and have failed to confront Indonesia publicly, unlike Singapore's leaders.

The government's failure to lead, and to provide clear information, was highlighted in Muar, where a state of emergency was announced via Facebook (there were quite a few "likes").

Our ministers' impersonation of decapitated chickens infuriated parents, who were left clueless whether schools would be closed. The API was more than double the "hazardous" level.

NONEThe annual haze is a human rights offence, and has cost lives and money in Indonesia, as well as in Malaysia. Yet successive Malaysian and Indonesian governments have been fiddling while Riau burns. Both governments have concentrated overwhelmingly on public relations and the blame game, rather than permanent solutions.

Malaysia's government has, in the past, pointed the finger at indigenous tribes for practising slash-and-burn shifting cultivation - a stupid excuse.

Land is burnt, mainly by migrant farmers and plantations, to clear space for agriculture. Indonesia's "transmigrasi policy" has resulted in an influx of migrant farmers from overcrowded Jawa to Sumatra and Kalimantan. Desperate for land, they have torched peat forests to make space for crops and to fertilise the soil.

Multinational palm oil and timber corporations have also swarmed in, taking advantage of lax environmental law enforcement, and a graft-ridden land concession system.

PT Adei, a palm oil subsidiary of Malaysia's KL Kepong group, has been named as a suspect by the Indonesian police for alleged fires, according to the Jakarta Post.

PT Bumireksa Nusasejati (BNS), a subsidiary of Malaysia's Sime Darby, has also been identified by environmental group Greenpeace as having 20 hot spots within its concession area, based on satellite pictures.

In contrast, Sime Darby claimed that "there were three hot spots within PT BNS' concession area. However, they are located outside of the company's operating area... local communities occupy and plant both cash crops such as corn, sugarcane and pineapple as well as perennial crops such as coconut and areca nuts on these lands."

Satellite maps and smokescreens

Both Sime Darby and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a global "sustainability" certification body comprising the industry and several NGOs, have been outraged by the claims made by Greenpeace.

Sime Darby has tried to shift responsibility for fires to local farmers, while the RSPO has blamed paper and pulp plantations. The RSPO said that "80 percent of the fires are occurring outside of palm oil plantations".

The RSPO has been derided by many environmentalists as a talking shop. A press statement on its website, next to grim statements on the Riau fires, reads "Shoppers around the world say ‘Yes!' to Sustainable Palm Oil".

NONEThe RSPO's credibility has suffered, for instance, because it has not expelled IOI, a member company that illegally took over farmers' native customary rights (NCR) land in Long Teran Kanan, Sarawak.

In February this year, the RSPO lifted its suspension on certification of all IOI plantations, apart from Long Teran Kanan. Palm oil companies around the world may well be saying "Yes!" to RSPO's open-ended "mediation" between IOI and NCR landowners, since 2011.

The RSPO picked out only five member companies, linked to the fires by the mass media, for investigation. The RSPO declared that concession maps, overlaid with satellite pictures of fire hot spots, cleared four companies of blame for the fires.

These included Malaysian-owned PT Adei, BNS and Tabung Haji as well as Singapore-based Golden Agri. The RSPO said the fifth, PT Jatim Jaya Perkasa, had not provided adequate maps.

The RSPO conceded that the four concession maps, provided by the companies themselves, contradicted Indonesia's official maps in the public domain.

The fifth RSPO member company, PT Jatim Jaya Perkasa, was later found to have 74 hot spots within its concession area, according to the World Resources Institute, an NGO member of the RSPO. The RSPO said it is investigating.

"Rather than claiming the innocence of members who've been reported in the media, the RSPO needs to address the real problem - years of peat land drainage and destruction, which is labelled ‘sustainable' under RSPO rules, and has laid the foundation for these disastrous fires," Greenpeace argued.

RSPO secretary-general Darrel Webber called for public transparency on the concession areas. "Companies and governments should work together to provide consistent concession boundaries to the public," Webber said.

Transparency and haze do not, unfortunately, go hand in hand.

Next: Moral hazard means more haze

KERUAH USIT is a human rights activist - ‘anak Sarawak, bangsa Malaysia’. This weekly column is an effort to provide a voice for marginalised Malaysians. Keruah Usit can be contacted at keruah_usit@yahoo.com