ABSTRACT
Transboundary haze pollution, which occurs annually, is Southeast Asia’s visible environmental challenge. The haze, which consists of pollutants is caused by several factors, including El Niño weather patterns that occur once a few years, its resulting dry season, the dense peatlands they burn on as well as slash-and-burn farming techniques. The haze envelops generally Singapore, southern Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia but sometimes also reaches Brunei, Vietnam and the Philippines. With regards to the manmade reason, many pinpoint the causes to the preparatory work of burning by small farmers (slash-and-burn subsistence farming) as well as multinational companies that are removing original forest lands to plant oil palm trees that can produce biodiesel. Burning is a comparatively low-cost option for achieving this objective and it is a technique that has started since at least the 1970s. Regional collective response to mitigate the haze came from The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) from 1985 onwards in the form of the vision for the Roadmap on ASEAN Cooperation towards Transboundary Haze Pollution Control. ASEAN also formulated the 1995 ASEAN Co-operation Plan on Transboundary Pollution and developed it into the Regional Haze Action Plan to prevent forest fires through more effective management policies and enforcement. In June 2013, Singapore set up an Inter-Ministerial Committee to coordinate national resources against the haze (Koh and Ho, 2013). The Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Defence (Mindef) also released public health advisories for Singaporeans to monitor their health condition, limit outdoor exposure and/or wear N95 masks with medical subsidies dispensed to vulnerable elderly and young children when necessary.
Keywords: peat, Singapore, subsistence farming, Indonesia, haze
INTRODUCTION
Transboundary Haze Pollution has become Southeast Asia’s most visible and persistent environmental issue, with an almost continuous yearly recurrence since the 1980s (Quek, 2023). Haze is defined as a cocktail of pollutants present in the air which contains soot particles, carbon dioxide and other toxic gases (Koh and Ho, 2013). During the El Niño season that comes to the Pacific Ocean region every few years and dry seasons/drought that it generates, the peatland landscape burns and generates the haze over Singapore, southern Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Haze pollution sometimes reaches Brunei, Vietnam and the Philippines (Koh and Ho, 2013). The 2015 El Niño caused strong fires in Indonesia from September through October which generated volumes of carbon dioxide, methane and carbon-dated 1,000-3,000 years-old smoke plumes into the atmosphere (Koh and Ho, 2013).
The forests where burning takes place have accumulated large amounts of peat which are semi-decayed plant matter that accumulated when plant growth is quicker than decay, forming peatlands where carbon from the atmosphere is sequestered on land (making up 3% of global surface area but storing 30% of soil organic carbon) (Nichols, 2015). From the last ice age, about 600-700 gigatonnes of carbon or 600-700 billion tonnes were sequestered on land from the atmosphere as peat but, when tropical peat forests are burned, carbon that required thousands of years to accumulate is quickly released into the atmosphere again (Nichols, 2015).
CAUSES OF THE FIRES
Forest fires in Sumatra, Indonesia, are the main cause of the haze in Singapore. Some researchers opine that most forest fires are attributable to land-burning in preparation for agriculture by smallholder farmers and large-scale commercial companies (mostly in the palm oil industry) as a low-cost and convenient option for its perpetrators (Quek, 2023). The history of such cultivation on a large-scale may have started minimally from the early 1970s. The thick smoke envelop of the October 1972 forest fire-generated haze in Sumatra and Kalimantan lowered visibility to 1 to 2 km in Singapore and it was caused by cultivators’ land-burning in Palembang and South Kalimantan, and only eased in mid-October when the wind direction shifted (Koh and Ho, 2013). Some Indonesian farmers practice shifting agriculture defined as traditional farming method that clear out forested spaces using the slash-and-burn method cultivation and it is observed that this method is being used with greater frequency in the decades leading up to the 21st century (Koh and Ho, 2013).
Some observers describe the haze as a kind of smog that arise from the sustained malpractice of slash-and-burn to clear forests and peat lands for palm oil cultivation in Indonesia although the palm oil producers have consistently rejected this critique and insisted that they practiced zero-burning policies (Koh and Ho, 2013). Indonesia Corruption Watch Chairperson Danang Widoyoko reported that the issue arose due to forestry sector corruption that prevented actions from being taken (Koh and Ho, 2013). Due to high oil prices, palm oil demand and prices have also arisen, giving palm oil plantations greater economic incentives to expand even faster (Quek, 2023).
In addition to slash-and-burn farming, the profitable cash crop of oil palms also provide a valuable source of income for processing into biodiesel and other uses. Burning large tracts of land prepares the land for commercial crops planting of oil palm. The 2013 haze outbreak was made more severe by large-scale burning of forests by palm oil firms that Indonesian officials claimed were carried out by Singaporean and Malaysian investors and this spurred the Singapore authorities to issue warnings against any Singapore-related firms engaged in illegal burning activities (Koh and Ho, 2013).
The Singapore Manufacturing Federation (SMF) also advocated boycotting of any offending firms by its members while the Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) chastised the firms connected with such activities (Koh and Ho, 2013). Similarly, Indonesian civil society’s non-government organizations (NGOs) and non-profit organizations (NPOs) also play a role in mitigation efforts. Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace International’s head of the Indonesia Forest Campaign, articulated: “The wholesale clearing of land and development on peat land has created the conditions for this problem to recur again and again. Until companies break their link with forest destruction, and the government strengthens the moratorium on forest clearance and fully protect all peat land, then this will be a recurring nightmare for the people of Sumatra and the region” (Koh and Ho, 2013).
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Charles Harvey, Dr Fuu Ming Kai, postdoc from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, and University of California at Irvine researchers published Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences research paper on radiocarbon measurements to ascertain the origins of the smoke. They found that 85% of the smoke comes from burning peatlands (De Leon, 2018). These academics from Singapore-MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have discovered that soil draining for agricultural production along with other factors have caused peat fires that can continue to burn underneath agricultural land even in low temperature and oxygen conditions (De Leon, 2018). With massive urbanization in the last few decades, the terrains have become very vulnerable to anthropogenic fire as Harvey explained: “Throughout the past 20 years, the majority of tropical forests have been cleared in order to create palm oil plantations” (De Leon, 2018).
ENVIRONMENTAL AND OTHER IMPACTS
Tropical peatlands inherently hold as much carbon as almost a decade’s worth of global fossil fuel use, and Indonesian peat fires in Indonesia have added about 10-40% greenhouse gases to the atmosphere as all the world’s fossil fuel use (De Leon, 2018). The haze reduces air quality in Southeast Asian cities of the affected area, leading to health issues and deaths for more than 40 million people, negatively impacts botanical and animal habitats (De Leon, 2018). Ruth DeFries, Professor of Ecology and Sustainable Development at Columbia University, detailed the health issues involved with the haze in the following manner:
The study [by MIT’s Charles Harvey and Dr Fuu Ming] directly measures the contribution of fires on peatland to smoke in Singapore and confirms that peat fires are major sources compared with deforestation and agricultural burning on mineral soils. Smoke from peat fires leads to reduced air quality far downwind of the fires, indicating the importance of controlling fires for the health of people living in the region. (De Leon, 2018)
Sometimes, the situation is so severe that it leads to a state of emergency. In June 2012, due to northward winds, Malaysia entered a state of emergency in locations like Muar and Ledang, while in Singapore outdoor activities were severely curtailed which impacted on business and daily residential activities (Koh and Ho, 2013). Besides human health issues, the economy is also severely affected. The 1997 haze outbreak resulted from large-scale forest burning that affected Singapore’s tourism industry causing economic detriment to the tune of approximately S$97.5 million to S$110.5 million (or approximately US$60.87 million to US$68.99 million) (Koh and Ho, 2013).
CONCLUSION
For countries that are affected by the haze, operational task forces are set up as a fast response mechanism in case rapid actions are needed to mitigate the problem. In September 1994, the Singapore Haze Task Force was established to coordinate anti-haze efforts and, by June 2013, it consisted of personnel from 23 government agencies gathering annually for the yearly dry season (typically from June to September) that overlaps with the haze occurrences (Koh and Ho, 2013).
The 2013 Task Force cooperated with the Indonesian authorities to control forest burning and, in June 2013, the Singaporean government established an Inter-Ministerial Committee chaired by Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen to coordinate national efforts against the haze (Koh and Ho, 2013). The Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Defence (Mindef) published health advisories for Singaporeans to track their health indicators and restrict outdoor exposure while N95 masks were released to retailers and given free to low-income families along with medical subsidies for vulnerable elderly and young children.
Singapore provided GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite pictures/locational coordinates of fire hotspots to Indonesian authorities/data interpreters from 1997 (Koh and Ho, 2013). The country also carried out training courses on the haze’s health impact, implemented air quality monitoring and, in 2006, provided assistance that included the use of an cloud-seeding aircraft, fire location satellite photos and a firefighting team though the offer was not taken up eventually (Koh and Ho, 2013). At an emergency meeting organized by Indonesia in June 2013, Singapore offered a similar assistance package and the Indonesia officials evaluated the offer but also did not take it up (Koh and Ho, 2013). On rare occasions, the limit of satellite imagery is also revealed. In 2013, the Indonesian island of Bintan within the Riau archipelago were cited for burning land for cultivation but this particular fire was not detected in the National Environment Agency (NEA) of Singapore’s satellite map (Koh and Ho, 2013).
Besides individual country responses, the regional organization (RO) of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) also coordinated responses to combat the haze and its impacts. Because of the haze’s reoccurrence, its economic damage and regionalized nature, ASEAN has formulated a collective response from 1985 through the Roadmap on ASEAN Cooperation towards Transboundary Haze Pollution Control, but the “Transboundary Haze-Free ASEAN by 2020” slogan did not get rid of the regional scourge (Quek, 2023).
Just before the 1997 haze outbreak, ASEAN came up with the 1995 ASEAN Co-operation Plan on Transboundary Pollution. The member states developed it into the Regional Haze Action Plan with the aim of preventing forest fires through more effective management policies/enforcement, setting up platforms to track land/forest fires and improving firefighting capacities (Koh and Ho, 2013). Some critics, however, cited the “ASEAN Way” of non-interference in domestic affairs of its member states in favour of non-confrontational diplomatic approaches as a reason that restricted member states’ legal action against ASEAN haze agreements’ non-compliant countries (Quek, 2023).
The civil society including third sector organizations (TSOs), NGOs and NPOs are also chipping in to supplement efforts by the state and supra-national regional organizations (ROs). In Malaysia, TSOs or civil service actors active in the transboundary haze pollution perform an advocacy function in engaging the community, gathering scientific and technical knowledge and then utilize them for consulting work and capacity-building community instruments as well as sharing them with the private sector and the state (Quek, 2023).
Third Sector Organisations (TSOs) have also interacted with the private sector by transferring capacity-building experience and knowledge ranging from managing peatlands and to modifying business model to them while setting up platforms for knowledge cross-sharing between the local communities, state and private entities (Quek, 2023). For TSO advocates, TSOs can fill in knowledge gaps often cited as a limitation of regional haze-mitigation efforts, particularly at the national level, affecting the efficiency in policy implementation and impeding effective strategies (Quek, 2023).
Academia, researchers and intellectuals have also chipped in with their efforts. Harvey and the MIT researchers have studied the replanting of native trees on a deforested/burned area as a proposed solution to combating the haze:
We are trying to see if we can bring it back to life. Ideally, the trees could be sustainably harvested for their lumber, and it would help stop the peat burning (De Leon, 2018).
Given the contributive efforts of multiple stakeholders listed above, some advocated more collective efforts amongst the government and all non-government entities to bring about better coordination, integration and attention to multi-scalar environmental policy regimes that spans multiple sectors (Quek, 2023).
Such multi-sectoral efforts may be crucial in 2023 due to weather conditions. On 29 December 2022, Indonesian Agency for Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics (Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi, dan Geofisika or BMKG) projected that 2023 would have the driest weather since 2019 due to less rain and the weakening La Nina pattern, creating conditions for forest fires (Reuters, 2022). BMKG Director Dwikorita Karnawati explained to a press conference:
Starting May until April 2023, it will be getting dryer compared to the past three years, so the risk of forest fire rises. [And the influence of La Nina, which refers to the cooling of ocean surface temperatures combined with winds and rains, will end around March 2023, causing lower rainfall so next year's dry season could be similar to that in 2019, when more than 1.65 million hectares of forests burned]. (Reuters, 2022)
According to World Bank (WB) estimations, those 2019 fires cost the countries affected minimally US$5.2 billion in damage and economic losses, but the Indonesian environment ministry’s data indicated Indonesia has achieved success in limiting economic losses in 2019 with merely over 200,000 hectares of forests and land burnt between January and November 2022 (Reuters, 2022). To prevent forest fires, Dwikorita indicated both BMKG and Indonesian environment ministry would carry out weather modification (cloud seeding or shooting salt flares to bring about rainfall in dry regions) in April/May 2023, but an unknown factor is whether droughts that affected production output of the main palm oil plantation regions in 2019 would occur again (Reuters, 2022).
REFERENCES
De Leon, Taylor. Burning Indonesian peat causes haze in Singapore. MIT News. 21 November 2018. Retrieved from https://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-researchers-peat-burning-sumatra-causes-severe-haze-singapore-1121
Eco-Business.com. Forest fires in Indonesia trigger haze fear in Singapore. ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. 2012. Retrieved from https://apgreenjobs.ilo.org/news/forest-fires-in-indonesia-trigger-haze-...
Koh, Jaime and Stephanie Ho. Haze pollution. National Library Board. 25 August 2013. Retrieved from https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_2013-08-30_185150.html
Nichols, Jonathan. Peat Fires Choking Southeast Asia Pose a New Threat to Global Climate. Columbia Climate School. 19 November 2015. Retrieved from https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2015/11/19/peat-fires-choking-southeas...
Quek, Xiao Tong. Achieving a haze-free future in Southeast Asia: The case of third-sector organisations in Malaysia. London School of Economics (LSE) Blogs. 12 Jan 2023. Retrieved from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/seac/2023/01/12/achieving-a-haze-free-future-in-...
Reuters. Indonesia weather agency predicts dry 2023, warns of forest fire risks. CNA. 29 Dec 2022. Retrieved from https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/indonesia-weather-agency-predicts-d...
Singapore Cooperation with Indonesia in Combating the Haze: Mitigating Forest Burning for Cultivation
ABSTRACT
Transboundary haze pollution, which occurs annually, is Southeast Asia’s visible environmental challenge. The haze, which consists of pollutants is caused by several factors, including El Niño weather patterns that occur once a few years, its resulting dry season, the dense peatlands they burn on as well as slash-and-burn farming techniques. The haze envelops generally Singapore, southern Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia but sometimes also reaches Brunei, Vietnam and the Philippines. With regards to the manmade reason, many pinpoint the causes to the preparatory work of burning by small farmers (slash-and-burn subsistence farming) as well as multinational companies that are removing original forest lands to plant oil palm trees that can produce biodiesel. Burning is a comparatively low-cost option for achieving this objective and it is a technique that has started since at least the 1970s. Regional collective response to mitigate the haze came from The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) from 1985 onwards in the form of the vision for the Roadmap on ASEAN Cooperation towards Transboundary Haze Pollution Control. ASEAN also formulated the 1995 ASEAN Co-operation Plan on Transboundary Pollution and developed it into the Regional Haze Action Plan to prevent forest fires through more effective management policies and enforcement. In June 2013, Singapore set up an Inter-Ministerial Committee to coordinate national resources against the haze (Koh and Ho, 2013). The Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Defence (Mindef) also released public health advisories for Singaporeans to monitor their health condition, limit outdoor exposure and/or wear N95 masks with medical subsidies dispensed to vulnerable elderly and young children when necessary.
Keywords: peat, Singapore, subsistence farming, Indonesia, haze
INTRODUCTION
Transboundary Haze Pollution has become Southeast Asia’s most visible and persistent environmental issue, with an almost continuous yearly recurrence since the 1980s (Quek, 2023). Haze is defined as a cocktail of pollutants present in the air which contains soot particles, carbon dioxide and other toxic gases (Koh and Ho, 2013). During the El Niño season that comes to the Pacific Ocean region every few years and dry seasons/drought that it generates, the peatland landscape burns and generates the haze over Singapore, southern Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Haze pollution sometimes reaches Brunei, Vietnam and the Philippines (Koh and Ho, 2013). The 2015 El Niño caused strong fires in Indonesia from September through October which generated volumes of carbon dioxide, methane and carbon-dated 1,000-3,000 years-old smoke plumes into the atmosphere (Koh and Ho, 2013).
The forests where burning takes place have accumulated large amounts of peat which are semi-decayed plant matter that accumulated when plant growth is quicker than decay, forming peatlands where carbon from the atmosphere is sequestered on land (making up 3% of global surface area but storing 30% of soil organic carbon) (Nichols, 2015). From the last ice age, about 600-700 gigatonnes of carbon or 600-700 billion tonnes were sequestered on land from the atmosphere as peat but, when tropical peat forests are burned, carbon that required thousands of years to accumulate is quickly released into the atmosphere again (Nichols, 2015).
CAUSES OF THE FIRES
Forest fires in Sumatra, Indonesia, are the main cause of the haze in Singapore. Some researchers opine that most forest fires are attributable to land-burning in preparation for agriculture by smallholder farmers and large-scale commercial companies (mostly in the palm oil industry) as a low-cost and convenient option for its perpetrators (Quek, 2023). The history of such cultivation on a large-scale may have started minimally from the early 1970s. The thick smoke envelop of the October 1972 forest fire-generated haze in Sumatra and Kalimantan lowered visibility to 1 to 2 km in Singapore and it was caused by cultivators’ land-burning in Palembang and South Kalimantan, and only eased in mid-October when the wind direction shifted (Koh and Ho, 2013). Some Indonesian farmers practice shifting agriculture defined as traditional farming method that clear out forested spaces using the slash-and-burn method cultivation and it is observed that this method is being used with greater frequency in the decades leading up to the 21st century (Koh and Ho, 2013).
Some observers describe the haze as a kind of smog that arise from the sustained malpractice of slash-and-burn to clear forests and peat lands for palm oil cultivation in Indonesia although the palm oil producers have consistently rejected this critique and insisted that they practiced zero-burning policies (Koh and Ho, 2013). Indonesia Corruption Watch Chairperson Danang Widoyoko reported that the issue arose due to forestry sector corruption that prevented actions from being taken (Koh and Ho, 2013). Due to high oil prices, palm oil demand and prices have also arisen, giving palm oil plantations greater economic incentives to expand even faster (Quek, 2023).
In addition to slash-and-burn farming, the profitable cash crop of oil palms also provide a valuable source of income for processing into biodiesel and other uses. Burning large tracts of land prepares the land for commercial crops planting of oil palm. The 2013 haze outbreak was made more severe by large-scale burning of forests by palm oil firms that Indonesian officials claimed were carried out by Singaporean and Malaysian investors and this spurred the Singapore authorities to issue warnings against any Singapore-related firms engaged in illegal burning activities (Koh and Ho, 2013).
The Singapore Manufacturing Federation (SMF) also advocated boycotting of any offending firms by its members while the Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) chastised the firms connected with such activities (Koh and Ho, 2013). Similarly, Indonesian civil society’s non-government organizations (NGOs) and non-profit organizations (NPOs) also play a role in mitigation efforts. Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace International’s head of the Indonesia Forest Campaign, articulated: “The wholesale clearing of land and development on peat land has created the conditions for this problem to recur again and again. Until companies break their link with forest destruction, and the government strengthens the moratorium on forest clearance and fully protect all peat land, then this will be a recurring nightmare for the people of Sumatra and the region” (Koh and Ho, 2013).
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Charles Harvey, Dr Fuu Ming Kai, postdoc from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, and University of California at Irvine researchers published Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences research paper on radiocarbon measurements to ascertain the origins of the smoke. They found that 85% of the smoke comes from burning peatlands (De Leon, 2018). These academics from Singapore-MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have discovered that soil draining for agricultural production along with other factors have caused peat fires that can continue to burn underneath agricultural land even in low temperature and oxygen conditions (De Leon, 2018). With massive urbanization in the last few decades, the terrains have become very vulnerable to anthropogenic fire as Harvey explained: “Throughout the past 20 years, the majority of tropical forests have been cleared in order to create palm oil plantations” (De Leon, 2018).
ENVIRONMENTAL AND OTHER IMPACTS
Tropical peatlands inherently hold as much carbon as almost a decade’s worth of global fossil fuel use, and Indonesian peat fires in Indonesia have added about 10-40% greenhouse gases to the atmosphere as all the world’s fossil fuel use (De Leon, 2018). The haze reduces air quality in Southeast Asian cities of the affected area, leading to health issues and deaths for more than 40 million people, negatively impacts botanical and animal habitats (De Leon, 2018). Ruth DeFries, Professor of Ecology and Sustainable Development at Columbia University, detailed the health issues involved with the haze in the following manner:
The study [by MIT’s Charles Harvey and Dr Fuu Ming] directly measures the contribution of fires on peatland to smoke in Singapore and confirms that peat fires are major sources compared with deforestation and agricultural burning on mineral soils. Smoke from peat fires leads to reduced air quality far downwind of the fires, indicating the importance of controlling fires for the health of people living in the region. (De Leon, 2018)
Sometimes, the situation is so severe that it leads to a state of emergency. In June 2012, due to northward winds, Malaysia entered a state of emergency in locations like Muar and Ledang, while in Singapore outdoor activities were severely curtailed which impacted on business and daily residential activities (Koh and Ho, 2013). Besides human health issues, the economy is also severely affected. The 1997 haze outbreak resulted from large-scale forest burning that affected Singapore’s tourism industry causing economic detriment to the tune of approximately S$97.5 million to S$110.5 million (or approximately US$60.87 million to US$68.99 million) (Koh and Ho, 2013).
CONCLUSION
For countries that are affected by the haze, operational task forces are set up as a fast response mechanism in case rapid actions are needed to mitigate the problem. In September 1994, the Singapore Haze Task Force was established to coordinate anti-haze efforts and, by June 2013, it consisted of personnel from 23 government agencies gathering annually for the yearly dry season (typically from June to September) that overlaps with the haze occurrences (Koh and Ho, 2013).
The 2013 Task Force cooperated with the Indonesian authorities to control forest burning and, in June 2013, the Singaporean government established an Inter-Ministerial Committee chaired by Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen to coordinate national efforts against the haze (Koh and Ho, 2013). The Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Defence (Mindef) published health advisories for Singaporeans to track their health indicators and restrict outdoor exposure while N95 masks were released to retailers and given free to low-income families along with medical subsidies for vulnerable elderly and young children.
Singapore provided GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite pictures/locational coordinates of fire hotspots to Indonesian authorities/data interpreters from 1997 (Koh and Ho, 2013). The country also carried out training courses on the haze’s health impact, implemented air quality monitoring and, in 2006, provided assistance that included the use of an cloud-seeding aircraft, fire location satellite photos and a firefighting team though the offer was not taken up eventually (Koh and Ho, 2013). At an emergency meeting organized by Indonesia in June 2013, Singapore offered a similar assistance package and the Indonesia officials evaluated the offer but also did not take it up (Koh and Ho, 2013). On rare occasions, the limit of satellite imagery is also revealed. In 2013, the Indonesian island of Bintan within the Riau archipelago were cited for burning land for cultivation but this particular fire was not detected in the National Environment Agency (NEA) of Singapore’s satellite map (Koh and Ho, 2013).
Besides individual country responses, the regional organization (RO) of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) also coordinated responses to combat the haze and its impacts. Because of the haze’s reoccurrence, its economic damage and regionalized nature, ASEAN has formulated a collective response from 1985 through the Roadmap on ASEAN Cooperation towards Transboundary Haze Pollution Control, but the “Transboundary Haze-Free ASEAN by 2020” slogan did not get rid of the regional scourge (Quek, 2023).
Just before the 1997 haze outbreak, ASEAN came up with the 1995 ASEAN Co-operation Plan on Transboundary Pollution. The member states developed it into the Regional Haze Action Plan with the aim of preventing forest fires through more effective management policies/enforcement, setting up platforms to track land/forest fires and improving firefighting capacities (Koh and Ho, 2013). Some critics, however, cited the “ASEAN Way” of non-interference in domestic affairs of its member states in favour of non-confrontational diplomatic approaches as a reason that restricted member states’ legal action against ASEAN haze agreements’ non-compliant countries (Quek, 2023).
The civil society including third sector organizations (TSOs), NGOs and NPOs are also chipping in to supplement efforts by the state and supra-national regional organizations (ROs). In Malaysia, TSOs or civil service actors active in the transboundary haze pollution perform an advocacy function in engaging the community, gathering scientific and technical knowledge and then utilize them for consulting work and capacity-building community instruments as well as sharing them with the private sector and the state (Quek, 2023).
Third Sector Organisations (TSOs) have also interacted with the private sector by transferring capacity-building experience and knowledge ranging from managing peatlands and to modifying business model to them while setting up platforms for knowledge cross-sharing between the local communities, state and private entities (Quek, 2023). For TSO advocates, TSOs can fill in knowledge gaps often cited as a limitation of regional haze-mitigation efforts, particularly at the national level, affecting the efficiency in policy implementation and impeding effective strategies (Quek, 2023).
Academia, researchers and intellectuals have also chipped in with their efforts. Harvey and the MIT researchers have studied the replanting of native trees on a deforested/burned area as a proposed solution to combating the haze:
We are trying to see if we can bring it back to life. Ideally, the trees could be sustainably harvested for their lumber, and it would help stop the peat burning (De Leon, 2018).
Given the contributive efforts of multiple stakeholders listed above, some advocated more collective efforts amongst the government and all non-government entities to bring about better coordination, integration and attention to multi-scalar environmental policy regimes that spans multiple sectors (Quek, 2023).
Such multi-sectoral efforts may be crucial in 2023 due to weather conditions. On 29 December 2022, Indonesian Agency for Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics (Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi, dan Geofisika or BMKG) projected that 2023 would have the driest weather since 2019 due to less rain and the weakening La Nina pattern, creating conditions for forest fires (Reuters, 2022). BMKG Director Dwikorita Karnawati explained to a press conference:
Starting May until April 2023, it will be getting dryer compared to the past three years, so the risk of forest fire rises. [And the influence of La Nina, which refers to the cooling of ocean surface temperatures combined with winds and rains, will end around March 2023, causing lower rainfall so next year's dry season could be similar to that in 2019, when more than 1.65 million hectares of forests burned]. (Reuters, 2022)
According to World Bank (WB) estimations, those 2019 fires cost the countries affected minimally US$5.2 billion in damage and economic losses, but the Indonesian environment ministry’s data indicated Indonesia has achieved success in limiting economic losses in 2019 with merely over 200,000 hectares of forests and land burnt between January and November 2022 (Reuters, 2022). To prevent forest fires, Dwikorita indicated both BMKG and Indonesian environment ministry would carry out weather modification (cloud seeding or shooting salt flares to bring about rainfall in dry regions) in April/May 2023, but an unknown factor is whether droughts that affected production output of the main palm oil plantation regions in 2019 would occur again (Reuters, 2022).
REFERENCES
De Leon, Taylor. Burning Indonesian peat causes haze in Singapore. MIT News. 21 November 2018. Retrieved from https://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-researchers-peat-burning-sumatra-causes-severe-haze-singapore-1121
Eco-Business.com. Forest fires in Indonesia trigger haze fear in Singapore. ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. 2012. Retrieved from https://apgreenjobs.ilo.org/news/forest-fires-in-indonesia-trigger-haze-...
Koh, Jaime and Stephanie Ho. Haze pollution. National Library Board. 25 August 2013. Retrieved from https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_2013-08-30_185150.html
Nichols, Jonathan. Peat Fires Choking Southeast Asia Pose a New Threat to Global Climate. Columbia Climate School. 19 November 2015. Retrieved from https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2015/11/19/peat-fires-choking-southeas...
Quek, Xiao Tong. Achieving a haze-free future in Southeast Asia: The case of third-sector organisations in Malaysia. London School of Economics (LSE) Blogs. 12 Jan 2023. Retrieved from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/seac/2023/01/12/achieving-a-haze-free-future-in-...
Reuters. Indonesia weather agency predicts dry 2023, warns of forest fire risks. CNA. 29 Dec 2022. Retrieved from https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/indonesia-weather-agency-predicts-d...