With the seasonal problems of haze constantly bothering countries like Singapore and Malaysia, one would often wonder why this constant problem has yet to be solved in the twenty first century. Is the haze really such a difficult issue to counter despite years of constant diplomatic discussions and advancement in technology?
The Southeast Asian haze was a result from forest fires resulting from the sustenance type slash and burn practices that are primarily performed on Indonesian islands such as Sumatra and Kalimantan. A majority of these burnings are in fact illegal and have continued to occur mainly because there has been a lack of enforcement in the country. This has been an ongoing problem for Indonesia for years and has been blamed on farmers and the many timber and palm oil companies.
Indeed, one would be questioning the implementations by the government in Indonesia with regards to the haze situation which was largely blamed on inaction rather than ineffective actions. Residents in the Riau and Kalimantan areas where the ongoing forest fires are occurring claim that the central government was intentionally slowing down the process of response, causing the situation to worsen to what it is today. In addition, weak enforcement and high corruption within the country’s environmental law division has resulted in perpetrators escaping punishment and going off with light penalties.
Controversies also arose when the Indonesian government claimed that neighbouring countries were not being grateful for the clean air when they were present, and instead merely harped on the haze which lasted “a month at the most”. In addition, Indonesia’s Vice President Jusuf Kalla requested Singapore to help if we wanted to, and “Don’t just talk.” Of course, this was met with a strong backlash as just a week before the speech, Indonesia had earlier rejected Singapore’s help stating that they had enough resources.
Indeed, with situation progressively worsening in recent years, a number of different actions have thus been taken by governments in ASEAN. For example, the Transboundary Haze Pollution agreement aims to mitigate forest fires and help the countries involved.
The Singapore government has also issued n95 masks to the citizens and schools have made purchases of air purifiers in hope of reducing the amount of particle pollutants in the air.
Between countries, there are bound to be tensions when it comes to activities that may trigger the reaction of the parties. For example, the recent move by Singapore to go after Indonesian companies that are linked to forest fires have resulted in retaliation by Indonesia as they claimed the republic was not showing “mutual respect”. Such are the hard truths to bear in mind when thinking about the actions that Singapore can pursue should our country wish to pursue the matter. With the globalised world around us, we can’t afford to create such tensions as trade, relations and defence are issues at risk of being strained, just for the sake of the perennial haze issue. In culmination, ASEAN countries can only afford to take a milder approach when approaching such topics and offer their assistance and opinions when it comes to such problems.