How Land-Use Change Is Driving Southeast Asia’s Air Quality Crisis — and Why Malaysia Should Be Paying Attention

ByRiajati

A new study from Nanyang Technological University, published this month in The Lancet Planetary Health, attaches some uncomfortable numbers to a problem Southeast Asia has been living with for two decades. The way land is being used across the region — clearing forests, expanding cropland, and growing cities — has measurably degraded air quality, and the public health bill is significant. The researchers estimate roughly 13,000 additional deaths in 2018 alone, with associated economic losses of around US$7.8 billion.

For Malaysia, sitting next to two of the most affected countries in the study, the implications are immediate and practical.

What the Study Looked At

The NTU-led team, headed by Professor Steve Yim of the Center for Climate Change and Environmental Health, modelled how land-use and land-cover transitions across Southeast Asia between 2001 and 2018 changed regional concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ground-level ozone (O3) — the two pollutants most closely tied to cardiovascular and respiratory disease.

The headline numbers:

  • Around 13,000 excess deaths in 2018 were linked to these land-use shifts
  • Economic impact reached approximately US$7.8 billion — about 0.1% of regional GDP
  • Productivity losses alone came to US$1.07 billion; healthcare costs another US$34 million
  • Forest degradation and deforestation drove nearly 30% of the excess deaths — by far the largest single contributor
  • Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand bore the heaviest health burden; Indonesia and Thailand led on economic damage
  • Impact concentrated in densely populated zones: Java, the Mekong Delta, and the Red River Delta

One finding deserves particular attention: more than 60% of the damage came from biogeophysical effects rather than direct emissions. In plain terms, the way cleared and re-purposed land alters local temperature, humidity, and surface conditions makes the same pollutants more harmful to people. It is not just that there is more PM2.5 — the atmosphere is reacting to it differently.

Forests as Air-Quality Infrastructure

The researchers were direct about the mechanism. Forests are effective natural filters; they absorb pollutants like PM2.5 and ozone precursors. When forest cover is removed, that filtering capacity goes with it, and pollutants accumulate faster in the air people breathe. This is why deforestation shows up as a disproportionately large driver despite cropland and urban growth also expanding at significant scale.

For policymakers and regional planners, the takeaway is that forest protection is not only a carbon or biodiversity issue. It is air-quality infrastructure with measurable public-health value.

What This Means for Malaysia

Malaysia’s land-use trajectory rhymes with the regional pattern. Palm-oil plantation expansion across Sarawak, Sabah, and parts of Peninsular Malaysia; ongoing peatland conversion; rapid urbanisation of the Klang Valley, Johor Bahru, and Penang corridors; and the recurring transboundary haze from Sumatra and Kalimantan all add up to sustained PM2.5 and O3 exposure for the population — exposure that varies sharply by season, location, and proximity to fire or industrial activity.

Yet the data Malaysians have to understand this exposure is thin. Most outdoor air-quality information comes from a relatively sparse regulatory monitoring network. That is adequate for national-level reporting and AQI advisories, but it does not give councils, plantations, industrial operators, hospitals, or schools the local-resolution data they need to make operational decisions during haze events, prescribed burns, or pollutant excursions.

Where Continuous Monitoring Fits

This is where deployable ambient air-quality monitoring stations earn their place. The Polludrone Ambient Air Quality Monitoring System that Riajati supplies measures PM2.5, PM10, O3, NO2, SO2, CO, and a full set of meteorological parameters in real time. A single unit can give an industrial site, plantation, hospital, school campus, or municipal area the data it needs to:

  • Trigger operational responses — shifting outdoor work schedules, closing windows, switching HVAC modes — when pollutant levels cross thresholds
  • Generate the long-term exposure data needed for ESG reporting, sustainability disclosures, and worker-safety compliance
  • Build the case for investment in mitigation: filtration, ventilation upgrades, buffer planting, or operational changes
  • Support land-use and development decisions with site-specific evidence rather than regional averages

The NTU study reinforces a point worth making clearly: air quality is no longer a passive regulatory variable. It is an active operational input — for hospitals worried about patient outcomes, factories worried about workforce productivity, plantation operators meeting buyer sustainability requirements, and councils balancing public health against economic development. The organisations that monitor it directly are the ones that can respond when it changes.

Working with Riajati

Riajati supplies environmental and air-quality monitoring instruments to Malaysian and ASEAN organisations, including Polludrone outdoor stations and a range of indoor and outdoor sensor solutions. Whether you are scoping a single station for a worksite or a multi-node deployment across a campus, district, or industrial estate, we can help size and specify a system that fits the operational question you need answered. Contact us at sales@rj.my.

Source: Phys.org — Southeast Asia’s changing landscape is fueling a deadly air crisis that costs billions. The underlying research: Yefu Gu et al., “Air quality, health, and economic effects of land use and land cover changes in southeast Asia in the 21st century: a modelling study”, The Lancet Planetary Health, 2026, DOI 10.1016/j.lanplh.2026.101457.

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