The smoke has reached the Philippines, and neighbours are doing the firefighting

Melinda Martinus of the ASEAN Studies Centre at Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute has been following how far this year's smoke has carried, and the answer keeps getting longer. Haze from Indonesia's fires has drifted as far as the southern Philippines. Closer to the source, visibility at Supadio Airport in Pontianak fell to about 100 metres, which stopped the plane carrying Indonesia's forestry minister from landing. Singapore now puts out daily haze advisories so people can plan their day around the air, and the ASEAN weather centre has held its highest alert, Level 3, since August.

Her piece for Fulcrum notes how much of the response is now coming from outside Indonesia. Malaysia asked for permission to fly cloud seeding missions over Indonesian territory, spraying particles into clouds to pull rain down onto burning peat, and those flights went ahead in late August. Martinus draws out what makes haze different from most regional arguments. Mekong water disputes involve China, a country ASEAN cannot instruct. Haze is caused by ASEAN members and breathed by ASEAN members, so there is nobody outside the group to blame, which is why the group's own usefulness is what ends up being judged.

She does not ask for another agreement. The region already has a haze action plan from 1997 and a binding treaty from 2002. What she wants is duller and more practical: shared rules for who does what in an emergency, data and communication systems that can actually talk to each other, joint drills, and a deal signed in advance so equipment and crews can cross borders without waiting for permission. The harder gap is blame: a satellite can find a hotspot in minutes, but proving which company is responsible needs concession maps, investigators and evidence, and all of that sits inside the Indonesian state.

Why it matters

If you live under this smoke in Kalimantan or Sumatra, foreign help arriving is now routine, and it is worth knowing what that help can and cannot do: seeding flights wet the ground for a few days, they do not stop anyone from lighting the next fire. The thing to watch is whether concession maps and named prosecutions appear, because those are the only tools that reach the companies. There is a slower bill too, paid in goodwill with the neighbours Indonesia sells to and needs on its side in every regional meeting.