Outdated Doctrine Hampers Efforts to Tackle Haze
That morning in Serian, Sarawak, the sun disappeared behind a thick blanket of deep orange haze. The acrid smell of smoke filled the air, while throats began to sting the moment people stepped outside their homes.
In the hospital emergency department, the sight of a mother tightly embracing her child as the youngster struggled to breathe during an asthma attack was enough to move anyone.
This is not merely about data charts, satellite images or statistics in daily news reports. It is the real suffering of people on the ground, fighting for every breath.
The Ministry of Health recorded an alarming 259 per cent surge in asthma cases in Sarawak, while the Air Pollutant Index (API) reading in Serian soared to an extraordinary 519, forcing a state of emergency to be declared.
A total of 647 schools were immediately closed, children were forced to remain indoors, and the community’s daily activities ground to a halt.
Meanwhile, millions of Malaysians across the country, including those in the administrative capital of Putrajaya, were once again forced to wear N95 masks as the air became increasingly toxic.
Yet the most troubling reality is that this haze is not a domestic disaster of our own making. We are suffering the consequences of fires deliberately set across the border.
Forest and peatland fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra have destroyed more than 300,000 hectares of land- an area almost three times the size of Singapore.
The El Nino climate phenomenon has undoubtedly brought extreme heat and drought, but human greed remains a major driving force. Illegal land-clearing fires, used as a cheap and convenient way to open up land for oil palm plantations, continue unabated.
When peatlands rich in organic matter catch fire, the flames can smoulder beneath the surface like embers that are extremely difficult to extinguish, releasing more than 23 million metric tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. As a result, Malaysia is left to bear severe economic losses.
Businesses are disrupted, the tourism sector suffers, labour productivity declines and public healthcare costs soar.
While some parties reap millions in profits from cheap land clearing across the border, our government and people are left to foot the bill for cloud-seeding operations and hospital treatment.
Amid growing public concern, a bold diplomatic initiative was set in motion in Bandar Seri Begawan.
During the 27th Malaysia-Brunei Annual Leaders’ Consultation, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and the Sultan of Brunei, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, reached a firm consensus: the haze crisis can no longer be swept under the carpet, and regional mechanisms must be fully mobilised through the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATHP).
The united stance of Anwar and the Sultan of Brunei sends a powerful moral and political message to regional leaders. Both leaders agreed that the highest diplomatic channels, including Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan, should push for concrete and effective action at the ASEAN negotiating table.
This call is more than an expression of regional concern. It is a firm reminder that transboundary pollution clearly runs contrary to the spirit of the ASEAN Charter and violates the fundamental principles of the agreement itself.
The AATHP, signed in 2002 and which came into force in 2003, is founded on a clear principle of responsibility.
Every member state has the sovereign right to manage its own natural resources, but it also bears the responsibility of ensuring that activities within its territory do not cause environmental harm or pose health threats to neighbouring countries.
The question is: why, more than two decades after the agreement was signed, does it still appear weak, ineffective and toothless whenever the dry season returns?
The root of the problem lies in an overly defensive ASEAN diplomatic culture, trapped by the outdated doctrine of “non-interference” and an excessive reluctance to upset neighbouring countries.
Regional governments remain reactive rather than proactive. Only when skies turn dark, air pollution reaches hazardous levels and emergency departments become overwhelmed with asthma patients do governments rush to deploy aircraft for cloud-seeding operations.
Climate experts, however, have repeatedly stressed that if the arrival of El Niño can be predicted months in advance, there is no justification for ASEAN to continue acting too late.
More disappointingly, the AATHP still lacks binding enforcement mechanisms and legal liability provisions. Malaysia and Singapore have stringent laws to punish those responsible for domestic open burning, but their jurisdiction ends at international borders.
Arresting hundreds of small-scale offenders on the ground will not extinguish the root cause of the fires as long as major plantation concession holders and corporate entities remain beyond the reach of legal action and transboundary compensation claims.
The call by Anwar and the Sultan of Brunei should serve as a catalyst for sweeping reforms to the AATHP. The agreement needs new “teeth”- financial penalty provisions, an environmental arbitration tribunal, a regional corporate blacklist and transparent real-time satellite monitoring without hiding behind narrow interpretations of national sovereignty.
Malaysians, Bruneians and other ASEAN citizens are not asking for excessive privileges. They are demanding only the most fundamental of rights: the right to breathe clean air without fearing that their children will fall ill.
It is time for ASEAN to prove that regional solidarity is more than rhetoric delivered in air-conditioned conference halls, but a genuine mechanism for protecting the lives and dignity of its people.
Media Selangor