B2 · Upper Intermediate
13 min
public healthenvironmentsoutheast asiaair quality
Thirty Million Lungs, One Burning Island
Respirar es un lujo cuando el cielo es naranja
Every year, fires in Indonesia turn the air across an entire region into a health emergency. Fletcher and Octavio dig into why this disaster keeps happening, who pays the price, and why the world barely notices.
Cada año, los incendios forestales en Indonesia convierten el aire de toda una región en un peligro para la salud. Fletcher y Octavio exploran por qué este desastre se repite, quién paga el precio y por qué el mundo apenas lo nota.
6 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| turbera | peatland | La quema de turberas produce un humo que contiene partículas muy peligrosas para los pulmones. |
| partículas finas | fine particles (PM2.5) | Las partículas finas son tan pequeñas que el cuerpo no puede filtrarlas y entran directamente en la sangre. |
| carga de enfermedad | burden of disease | La carga de enfermedad causada por el humo de los incendios es comparable a la de algunas epidemias. |
| llevar + gerundio | to have been doing something (ongoing duration) | Llevamos décadas viendo los mismos incendios sin encontrar una solución duradera. |
| a sotavento | downwind / leeward | Malasia y Singapur están a sotavento de Indonesia y reciben el humo de los incendios cada año. |
| soberanía | sovereignty | Indonesia tiene soberanía sobre su territorio, lo que limita la capacidad de sus vecinos para intervenir. |
There's a photograph I keep coming back to this week.
An orangutan named Sampurna, pulled out of a fire zone in Borneo.
And my first instinct was, okay, that's a wildlife story.
But the more I looked at it, the more I thought: this is actually a health story.
A catastrophic one.
Claro, el orangután es la imagen que llega a los periódicos.
Of course, the orangutan is the image that makes it into the papers.
Pero detrás de ese animal hay millones de personas que llevan semanas respirando un aire que es, literalmente, tóxico.
But behind that animal there are millions of people who have spent weeks breathing air that is, literally, toxic.
En Malasia, en Indonesia, en partes de Filipinas.
In Malaysia, Indonesia, parts of the Philippines.
El humo no respeta fronteras.
Smoke doesn't respect borders.
Right, and Japan just dispatched a naval vessel, the Kunisaki, from Kure to help fight the fires.
That's not nothing.
When a country sends a warship on a firefighting mission, you know the scale of what you're dealing with.
Lo que me parece importante es que este no es un fenómeno nuevo ni sorprendente.
What I find important is that this is neither a new nor a surprising phenomenon.
Llevamos décadas viendo esto.
We've been watching this for decades.
Los incendios en Indonesia en 1997 fueron probablemente los peores del siglo veinte en esa región.
The Indonesia fires of 1997 were probably the worst of the twentieth century in that region.
Y sin embargo, cada año el ciclo se repite.
And yet, every year the cycle repeats.
I covered the tail end of the '97 fires, actually.
I was in Jakarta for something else entirely and the sky over the city had this amber quality to it, mid-afternoon, that I remember finding beautiful before I understood what it was.
Es una imagen muy poderosa.
That's a very powerful image.
Y ese color naranja que describes es exactamente lo que los niños en Palangkaraya o en Pontianak ven desde sus ventanas hoy.
And that orange color you're describing is exactly what children in Palangkaraya or Pontianak see from their windows today.
Solo que para ellos no es algo que puedan observar desde fuera.
Except for them it's not something they can observe from the outside.
Es el aire que tienen que respirar.
It's the air they have to breathe.
So let's establish what we're actually talking about medically, because I think people hear 'smoke' and picture a campfire.
This is not a campfire.
No, para nada.
No, not at all.
Cuando se queman turberas, que es lo que pasa en Borneo y Sumatra, el humo contiene partículas muy finas, lo que los científicos llaman PM2.5.
When peatlands burn, which is what happens in Borneo and Sumatra, the smoke contains very fine particles, what scientists call PM2.5.
Son tan pequeñas que los pulmones no pueden filtrarlas.
They're so small that the lungs cannot filter them.
Entran directamente en el torrente sanguíneo.
They go directly into the bloodstream.
And peatlands are the key thing here, because these aren't just surface fires.
Peat burns underground.
It's like a slow-burning fuse you can't see and can't easily extinguish.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y eso es lo que hace que el problema sea tan difícil de resolver.
And that's what makes the problem so difficult to solve.
Puedes apagar un incendio en la superficie.
You can extinguish a surface fire.
Pero si la turba sigue ardiendo debajo, el humo no para.
But if the peat keeps burning underground, the smoke doesn't stop.
En algunos casos, estas turberas han estado ardiendo durante meses.
In some cases, these peatlands have been burning for months.
Who actually gets hurt the worst here?
Because I assume it's not evenly distributed.
Los más vulnerables son los niños pequeños, los ancianos y las personas que ya tienen enfermedades respiratorias como el asma.
The most vulnerable are young children, the elderly, and people who already have respiratory conditions like asthma.
Pero también las comunidades indígenas que viven en los bosques, como los pueblos dayak en Borneo, que no tienen acceso a hospitales ni a equipos de protección.
But also indigenous communities living in the forests, like the Dayak peoples in Borneo, who have no access to hospitals or protective equipment.
There's a cruelty to that.
The communities least responsible for the fires are often the ones absorbing the worst health consequences.
That's a pattern I recognize from other environmental disasters.
Tienes razón.
You're right.
Y hay datos que lo confirman.
And there is data that confirms it.
Estudios de la Universidad de Harvard estimaron que los incendios de 2015 en Indonesia causaron más de cien mil muertes prematuras en toda la región, incluyendo Malasia y Singapur.
Studies from Harvard University estimated that the 2015 Indonesia fires caused more than one hundred thousand premature deaths across the region, including Malaysia and Singapore.
Cien mil.
One hundred thousand.
Es una cifra que debería estar en todos los telediarios.
That is a figure that should be on every news broadcast.
A hundred thousand.
And I'll be honest with you, I had to go look that up because I didn't believe it at first.
But the research is solid.
Duke, Harvard, several peer-reviewed studies all land in roughly the same place.
Y eso no incluye los efectos a largo plazo.
And that doesn't include the long-term effects.
Los niños que respiran ese aire durante meses desarrollan problemas pulmonares que los acompañan toda la vida.
Children who breathe that air for months develop lung problems that stay with them for life.
Hay investigaciones que muestran que los que nacen durante los años de grandes incendios tienen peores resultados educativos y de salud décadas más tarde.
There is research showing that those born during years of major fires have worse educational and health outcomes decades later.
That second-order effect is devastating.
You're not just talking about coughs and sore throats.
You're talking about cognitive development, lung capacity for life, economic productivity.
One fire season ripples out for thirty years.
Hay un concepto que me parece muy útil aquí: la carga de enfermedad.
There's a concept I find very useful here: the burden of disease.
Los economistas de salud lo miden en años de vida saludable perdidos.
Health economists measure it in healthy life years lost.
Y cuando haces ese cálculo para las crisis de humo en el sudeste asiático, los números son simplemente enormes, comparables a los de grandes epidemias.
And when you run that calculation for the smoke crises in Southeast Asia, the numbers are simply enormous, comparable to those of major epidemics.
And yet it doesn't get treated like an epidemic.
There's no emergency WHO response, no global fundraising telethon.
It's just...
the haze season.
Like it's weather.
Eso es algo que me irrita profundamente.
That is something that genuinely irritates me.
En parte, creo que es porque las víctimas no son visibles de la misma manera.
Partly, I think it's because the victims are not visible in the same way.
Alguien que muere de un infarto provocado por años de respirar aire contaminado no aparece en las estadísticas de la crisis del humo.
Someone who dies of a heart attack brought on by years of breathing polluted air doesn't appear in the smoke crisis statistics.
La relación causa-efecto es más difícil de ver.
The cause-and-effect relationship is harder to see.
Okay, so let's get into why this keeps happening.
Because I've been hearing about the Indonesian fires for as long as I've been following the region, and the explanation I always get is: palm oil.
But is that the whole story?
El aceite de palma es una parte importante, sí.
Palm oil is an important part, yes.
Las empresas queman bosques y turberas para limpiar el terreno y cultivar palma aceitera, porque es el método más barato.
Companies burn forests and peatlands to clear land and cultivate oil palms, because it's the cheapest method.
Pero también hay pequeños agricultores que usan el fuego para preparar sus tierras.
But there are also small farmers who use fire to prepare their land.
Y hay incendios que empiezan de forma natural con el calor.
And there are fires that start naturally with the heat.
Es una combinación de factores.
It's a combination of factors.
But the corporate angle matters, right?
Because small farmers don't drain peatlands to plant a thousand hectares of palm.
No, claro.
No, of course not.
El drenaje de turberas es una operación industrial.
Peatland drainage is an industrial operation.
Y el problema es que una turbera drenada se convierte en un material increíblemente inflamable.
And the problem is that a drained peatland becomes incredibly flammable material.
Es como dejar una esponja empapada de petróleo al sol.
It's like leaving a sponge soaked in petroleum in the sun.
Cuando hay una chispa, arde durante meses.
When there's a spark, it burns for months.
There's also a geopolitical layer that I find fascinating and frustrating in equal measure.
Indonesia is a sovereign country.
Malaysia and Singapore are downwind and get the smoke.
But they can't exactly tell Jakarta how to manage its forests.
Es una tensión enorme dentro de la ASEAN.
It's an enormous tension within ASEAN.
Singapur aprobó una ley en 2014 que permite demandar a empresas extranjeras por contaminación del aire.
Singapore passed a law in 2014 that allows foreign companies to be sued for air pollution.
Y ha habido momentos de relaciones muy tensas con Yakarta.
And there have been moments of very strained relations with Jakarta.
Pero al final, Indonesia tiene soberanía sobre su territorio, y eso limita lo que los vecinos pueden hacer.
But in the end, Indonesia has sovereignty over its territory, and that limits what neighbors can do.
I once had a conversation with a Singaporean official, off the record, who described the annual haze as a kind of slow hostage situation.
His words, not mine.
You can't shoot your way out of it and you can't negotiate your way out of it.
Esa descripción es brutal pero bastante precisa.
That description is brutal but fairly accurate.
Y lo que complica más las cosas es que muchas de las empresas que queman turberas en Indonesia tienen accionistas en Singapur o en Malasia.
And what complicates things further is that many of the companies burning peatlands in Indonesia have shareholders in Singapore or Malaysia.
Así que los países que sufren el humo están, en parte, financiando los incendios.
So the countries suffering from the smoke are partly financing the fires.
That's the kind of detail that makes your head spin if you let it.
Follow the ownership structure far enough and you find pension funds from wealthy countries investing in the exact companies causing this.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y luego están los consumidores.
And then there are the consumers.
El aceite de palma está en casi la mitad de los productos que compramos en los supermercados.
Palm oil is in nearly half the products we buy at supermarkets.
Galletas, champú, margarina, jabón.
Biscuits, shampoo, margarine, soap.
Es muy difícil escapar de él en Europa o en Estados Unidos.
It's very difficult to escape it in Europe or the United States.
Which creates this uncomfortable position where boycotts feel morally satisfying but economically complicated, because if palm oil demand collapses overnight, you've just wrecked the livelihoods of millions of small Indonesian farmers who had nothing to do with the big corporate burns.
Por eso es importante que no simplifiquemos demasiado.
That's why it's important not to oversimplify.
Las soluciones que parecen obvias desde Europa o desde Estados Unidos a veces ignoran realidades muy complejas sobre el terreno.
Solutions that seem obvious from Europe or the United States sometimes ignore very complex realities on the ground.
Lo que sí es claro es que necesitamos mejores sistemas de certificación, mejor aplicación de las leyes forestales en Indonesia y más presión sobre las grandes corporaciones.
What is clear is that we need better certification systems, better enforcement of forestry laws in Indonesia, and more pressure on major corporations.
Indonesia has actually made real progress on this in the last decade.
Jokowi declared a peatland restoration program after the catastrophic 2015 fires.
There's a Peatland Restoration Agency.
The question is whether it's been enforced.
El problema con esas agencias es que dependen mucho de la voluntad política del momento.
The problem with those agencies is that they depend heavily on the political will of the moment.
Cuando hay presión internacional, funcionan mejor.
When there's international pressure, they work better.
Cuando baja la atención, la aplicación de las normas también baja.
When attention fades, enforcement also fades.
Y la atención internacional sobre los incendios en Indonesia es, seamos honestos, bastante irregular.
And international attention on Indonesia's fires is, let's be honest, quite inconsistent.
The orangutan gets more coverage than the hundred thousand people.
Sí, así es.
Yes, that's how it is.
No lo digo como crítica a las personas que se preocupan por los animales, porque también me importan.
I don't say it as a criticism of people who care about animals, because I care about them too.
Pero hay algo que revela sobre cómo funciona la atención mediática global.
But it reveals something about how global media attention works.
Un animal con cara es más fácil de fotografiar que la inflamación crónica de unos pulmones.
An animal with a face is easier to photograph than the chronic inflammation of someone's lungs.
What about the health infrastructure?
Because when I think about Borneo, I'm not thinking about well-funded regional hospitals with pulmonology departments.
No, la situación es muy difícil.
No, the situation is very difficult.
En las zonas rurales de Kalimantan o de Sumatra, los centros de salud son escasos y a menudo no tienen los medicamentos básicos.
In rural areas of Kalimantan or Sumatra, health centers are scarce and often lack basic medicines.
Durante las crisis de humo, la demanda de atención médica se dispara, y el sistema simplemente no puede responder.
During smoke crises, demand for medical care skyrockets, and the system simply cannot respond.
Muchas familias no tienen acceso a mascarillas adecuadas, que en estas situaciones son absolutamente esenciales.
Many families have no access to proper masks, which in these situations are absolutely essential.
And the cruelest irony is that the areas with the worst air quality are often the areas with the least capacity to respond to the health consequences.
We saw the same dynamic during COVID in rural Indonesia.
Es una cuestión de justicia sanitaria, al final.
It's a question of health justice, ultimately.
Las enfermedades no se distribuyen de forma aleatoria.
Diseases don't distribute themselves randomly.
Siguen los patrones de la pobreza y de la marginación.
They follow the patterns of poverty and marginalization.
Eso no es nuevo, pero en el caso del humo de los incendios, la desigualdad es especialmente visible.
That's not new, but in the case of fire smoke, the inequality is especially visible.
Octavio, you used an interesting phrase a few minutes ago.
You said llevamos décadas viendo esto.
We've spent decades watching this.
And I want to ask about that llevar construction because I've heard it a dozen times and I still reach for it wrong.
Sí, es una de las construcciones más útiles del español y que a los angloparlantes les cuesta bastante.
Yes, it's one of the most useful constructions in Spanish and one that English speakers find quite difficult.
Llevar más gerundio expresa la duración de una acción que todavía continúa.
Llevar plus the gerund expresses the duration of an ongoing action.
Entonces, llevamos décadas viendo esto significa literalmente que llevamos décadas en el proceso de ver esto, que empezó hace tiempo y que sigue ahora.
So, llevamos décadas viendo esto literally means we've been in the process of seeing this for decades, that it started a while ago and is still continuing now.
Es diferente de decir hemos visto esto durante décadas, que es más estático.
It's different from saying we have seen this for decades, which is more static.
So it bakes the continuity into the verb itself.
English kind of does this with the present perfect progressive, 'we've been watching this for decades,' but we don't use it as automatically as you seem to reach for llevar.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y lo bueno es que es muy flexible.
And the nice thing is that it's very flexible.
Puedes decir lleva dos horas esperando, llevo meses sin dormir bien, llevamos años intentando resolver este problema.
You can say he's been waiting for two hours, I've been sleeping badly for months, we've been trying to solve this problem for years.
Siempre transmite esa idea de algo que comenzó en el pasado y que todavía está en marcha.
It always carries that idea of something that began in the past and is still ongoing.
Y suena mucho más natural que cualquier otra alternativa.
And it sounds much more natural than any alternative.
Llevamos años hablando de los incendios en Indonesia sin resolverlo.
That's the sentence for this whole episode, right there.
Perfecto.
Perfect.
Grammatically impeccable, Fletcher.
Grammatically impeccable, Fletcher.
Aunque probablemente lo habrías dicho con hielo en el vaso.
Though you probably would have said it with ice in your glass.