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Haze Highlights Weak Asean Cooperation: Analysts
October 24, 2010

Construction workers lay down a roof at a building site as smoke obscures the skyline in Singapore on Friday. Haze from forest fires in Sumatra has prompted an offer of help from the Singapore government to put out the fires. (EPA Photo/Stephen Morrison) Construction workers lay down a roof at a building site as smoke obscures the skyline in Singapore on Friday. Haze from forest fires in Sumatra has prompted an offer of help from the Singapore government to put out the fires. (EPA Photo/Stephen Morrison)
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Singapore.  Just a week after Southeast Asia hailed “substantive progress” against cross-border air pollution, the problem of haze from Indonesia raises fresh questions about the effectiveness of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, whose leaders will hold a two-day summit in Hanoi starting on Thursday.

Singapore’s foreign minister, George Yeo, phoned his Indonesian counterpart, Marty Natalegawa, on Friday to press for action and offer help in extinguishing forest fires largely set by farmers on Sumatra to clear land for cultivation.

Malaysian officials also vented their frustration at the persistent problem, which analysts said highlighted weaknesses both within individual Asean countries and the bloc itself in enforcing domestic laws and regional pacts.

“This just shows that Asean must move from talk to action,” said Joko Arif, Southeast Asia forest team leader at environmental group Greenpeace. “Asean has been talking for more than 10 years on how to combat forest fires and haze, but I think more concrete action needs to be done.”

For its part, he added, Indonesia should effectively implement laws that ban the use of fire to clear land and be more transparent in giving out information on the location and size of the burning activities.

Haze has been on Asean’s agenda since 1997-98, when a pall of smoke caused by fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan wafted across Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. More than nine million hectares of land were burned, costing the region an estimated $9 billion in economic, social and environmental losses, according to Asean.

In 2002, the grouping adopted the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution to coordinate efforts to fight the fires, often caused by slash-and-burn practices by farmers and companies as they clear massive tracts of land for products like palm oil.

Only Indonesia has yet to ratify the treaty.

The grouping also boasts a Regional Haze Action Plan, the Asean Peatland Management Strategy and a Panel of Asean Experts on Fire and Haze Assessment and Coordination. Yet the fires recur every year and the smoke continues to afflict Indonesia’s neighbors with varying degrees of seriousness.

“Asean really has to transcend its reputation as a talk shop,” said Rafael Senga, the Asia Pacific energy policy chief at World Wildlife Fund International.

“We all know that Asean has achieved some headway in some areas as an organization. But for issues that have a domestic character like deforestation, Asean is basically toothless.”

Senga said Indonesia’s drive to significantly increase its palm oil production was leading to massive deforestation, while Indonesian officials often blame poor farmers for the fires.

Mely Caballero-Anthony, a Singapore-based expert on non-traditional security threats, said that while Asean had a haze agreement, it could not be fully implemented because Indonesia had yet to ratify it.

Moreover, the bloc has yet to draw up an implementing mechanism for the treaty, she added.

 
Agence France-Presse