Why the region's haze agreement cannot make the burning stop

Malaysia and Brunei say they will raise the smoke at ASEAN. Indonesia has signed the regional haze agreement, hosts its new control centre, and chaired the ministers' meeting on haze in July, weeks before the fires got worse. Writing for Indonesia at Melbourne, researcher Rizky Ihsan starts from the obvious question: with about 202,010 hectares burned between January and July this year, why does none of that regional machinery change anything on the ground?

His answer is that the machinery was built not to. The ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, signed in 2002 and ratified by Indonesia in 2014, was written to be acceptable to governments rather than binding on them. The country where the fires are burning decides what to report, whether the situation counts as an emergency, and whether to ask for help. If a neighbour sends a formal question, the duty is to answer it, and the duty ends there. The new coordinating centre in Jakarta cannot switch itself on; it waits for a national government to declare an emergency and request assistance.

Singapore and Malaysia tried to close that gap with their own laws, and the attempts show why it stays open. Singapore's 2014 law reaches companies that cause fires outside its territory, but has produced no prosecutions, because the evidence sits inside Indonesia. Malaysia gave up drafting its version in 2023 for the same reason. When Singapore served legal notices on six Indonesian companies in 2016, Jakarta objected and Singapore stepped back, restating its commitment to cooperation. Ihsan's conclusion is uncomfortable and precise: none of this is a breach of the agreement. Showing up at regional meetings is simply easier than enforcing land-clearing rules against large plantation and farming companies at home.

Why it matters

Anyone waiting for ASEAN pressure to clear the air should stop waiting, because no neighbour has a lever that reaches the companies lighting the fires. The pressure that can work is domestic: whether Indonesian prosecutors name and charge the firms behind specific burned concessions, and whether those names are published. Watch for that, rather than for the next regional statement, because a statement costs the government nothing and a prosecution costs someone a plantation.