Two months of smoke, and no law that reaches the people who lit the fires

Smoke from Indonesia's worst fires in a decade has sat over Malaysia and Singapore for two months, and the regional conversation has moved from firefighting to lawyers. John Power reports for Al Jazeera that more than 2 million hectares have burned, most of it blamed on land clearing by palm oil plantation owners. The ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, signed in 2002, is legally binding on all 11 members, but there is no court behind it: disagreements can only be settled by talking, and taking a case to the International Court of Justice would need every side to agree first. The agreement's coordinating office in Jakarta opened only in April 2026, nearly 25 years after someone first proposed it.

National law has not filled the gap. Singapore's Transboundary Haze Pollution Act of 2014 lets it go after companies for burning carried out abroad, with fines of S$100,000 (about 78,300 US dollars) a day up to a ceiling of S$2 million. Its environment agency has issued cease-burning notices to 10 Indonesia-based firms this season. In twelve years, not one company has been prosecuted under the law. Alan Khee-Jin Tan of the National University of Singapore says prosecutors would need firsthand evidence gathered inside Indonesia, and defendants would argue the fire started outside their concession and spread onto it. Malaysia abandoned a similar bill in 2023 for that reason.

Other experts point at politics instead. Eugene Tan of Singapore Management University says the central obstacle is that Indonesia does not act hard against its own companies, and suggests pressure through certified sustainable palm oil, consumer boycotts and the banks that lend to plantations. Mohd Hazmi Mohd Rusli of Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia blames ASEAN's preference for consensus and non-interference, and wants the existing treaty given independent monitoring rather than a new text written. Tempers are showing. Prabowo Subianto hit out at countries that "like to insult" Indonesia and promised to name foreign companies he says share the blame. Last week a Malaysian politician said Indonesia should be treated as an outcast inside ASEAN. The quarrel is old: in 2016 Singapore tried to summon an Indonesian company director, and the environment minister then, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, accused it of lacking "mutual respect."

Why it matters

For anyone downwind, the practical test is not what Singapore's law says but what Indonesian prosecutors do, because Alan Tan expects Singapore to move only against firms Jakarta has already charged. Watch whether the arrests go beyond individuals caught lighting fires and reach the companies holding the concessions, and watch the buyers and the banks, since their rules will bite long before any courtroom does. The insult now being traded has its own price: a country called an outcast by its neighbours negotiates everything else from a weaker seat.