Haze, by definition, is a term normally denoting a naturally occurring climatic condition in which visibility is affected; for instance, the phrase “heat haze”. In Southeast Asia the term is rather euphemistically used to refer to the smoke emitted from land and forest fires, both natural and man-made, that visibly persists in the atmosphere. Haze is described as transboundary when the smoke travels across political boundaries and remains in the airspace of neighbouring countries.

The first reported incidence of transboundary haze in Southeast Asia was in 1982. Almost forty years later, the region continues to suffer from almost annual haze episodes, the most severe being during the years 1994, 1997–98 (which remains the region's worst haze episode in history), 2005, 2013, 2015, and most recently in 2019. Indeed, the situation seems to be getting worse: while previous severe episodes were largely confined to the southern Southeast Asian subregion, recent years have seen serious incidences in the northern (Mekong) subregion as well.

What can explain the persistence of transboundary haze in Southeast Asia? Why has the region not been able to act to effectively mitigate the issue in light of its well-known negative health, environmental and economic effects (see “Here's How Much the Haze Costs Us”, p. 58 of this collection)? This collection argues that transboundary haze is not only a physical problem linked to fire but also a political one with complex socioeconomic and diplomatic considerations.

Regional Responses: ASEAN and Haze Cooperation

The fires that cause haze in the southern Southeast Asian region are mainly located in Indonesia and to a lesser extent Malaysia. Fires in the Mekong subregion occur mainly at the Golden Triangle border areas of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. To date, transboundary haze has, at one time or another and in varying levels of severity, affected all ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

With causes and effects squarely rooted within the region, the haze is a uniquely ASEAN problem. The association first acknowledged that haze was a regional concern in 1985, and this was soon followed by many agreements for regional cooperation to mitigate the issue, as summarized in the timeline below:

1985 The Agreement on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources specifically referred to air pollution and “transboundary environmental effects”.

The Fiery Peats of Haze in Southeast Asia

First published in Clean Malaysia on 10 May 2016.

You would be forgiven for thinking the haze is here to stay. After all, countries in Southeast Asia have been experiencing almost annual haze episodes since the 1980s. And despite increasingly desperate rhetoric from governments, NGOs and the public across the region to banish haze once and for all, haze continues to be a dry season staple.

What makes the haze problem such a difficult one to solve? The common assumption is that haze is a result of smoke from naturally occurring forest fires; a natural phenomenon that is near impossible to curb or control. A deeper look into the human factors surrounding these fires, however, paints a picture that is quite contrary—and controllable.

Not All Smoke is Created Equal

It is correct that haze is a result of smoke from forest fires. But not all forest fires are the same, and not all of them produce the same kind of smoke. This is the key to understanding the haze problem, and its solution.

When you look out your window on a hazy day, what do you see? A murky grey shroud tinting your view of the skyline, and sometimes, on closer inspection, small black particles floating about as well. This particular type of haze is the result of a particular type of smoke from a very particular type of fire.

There are generally three types of naturally occurring forest fires in the region: brush, crown, and peat fires. Brush and crown fires are no big deal. Brush fires spread along low-lying vegetation, while crown fires burn the crowns of trees and tall shrubs. They both spread at a relatively slow rate and burn fresh vegetation. This “fresh” fuel means these fires usually produce a light smoke that disperses easily. They also die out quickly because of the high water content of the vegetation.

Peat fires, on the other hand, are quite different. Peat itself is a unique type of soil. Peat is commonly found along riverbanks and other coastal areas. Southeast Asian peatlands make up a whopping sixty per cent of the world's wetlands and they cover approximately twelve per cent of the region's land area.

Being born and bred in Malaysia, haze was an unavoidable part of growing up for me. With the massive 1997–98 haze episode coinciding with my formative years, this transboundary puzzle seemed an obvious research topic of choice during my undergraduate studies. Little did I know that a small student conference paper would somehow snowball into fifteen immersive years and counting of research.

The title of this book is directly lifted from the title of my academic blog, which I have maintained since 2015. The blog title was, in turn, inspired by the popular phrase “to miss the forests for the trees”, which is defined by Merriam Webster's Dictionary as “to not understand or appreciate a larger situation, problem, etc., because one is considering only a few parts of it”.

Indeed, over the years, as I do more fieldwork, speak to more people and collect more personal experiences, I am even more appreciative of how large and complex the haze situation in Southeast Asia truly is, and how impossible it is for one to consider and understand all the different aspects of the problem.

As an academic who focuses on an issue that is very much in the public eye, I have enjoyed the privilege of being able to share my research, hypotheses and opinions with an interested public audience beyond academia, at a pace more-or-less reflective of the rapid development of this issue on the ground. Thus, this book is a collection of my commentaries, some solicited and some not, previously published on various media platforms, on various facets and various stages of the regional transboundary haze problem and its links to unsustainable agribusiness practices.

My view from Malaysia is, as expected, somewhat myopic in that my research, and by extension this book, focuses on the fires and haze in the southern ASEAN subregion and its connection to this particular subregion's “golden crop”—palm oil. Hence, I should caution that the issues discussed within this collection, while not entirely dissimilar, should not be easily generalized to apply to the Mekong subregion.

The commentaries featured in this collection were originally published between 2013 and 2020. They are divided into four broad topics and are arranged chronologically within each of these topics.

Singapore's Transboundary Pollution Act: Prospects and Challenges

First published in Khor Reports on 8 March 2014.

Last June saw Singapore battling with its most severe episode of haze yet. During that period, Singapore's Pollutant Standards Index hit the record high of 401. This event ignited a diplomatic row between Indonesia and Singapore, with Dr Vivian Balakrishnan of Singapore's Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources almost immediately accusing Indonesia of not caring about the welfare of its neighbours. It was also around this time that Dr Balakrishnan first revealed plans to table a Transboundary Pollution Act that would provide for criminal and civil liability for any Singaporean or non-Singaporean entity causing or contributing to transboundary haze pollution in Singapore.

The Draft Act

A draft version of the act has now been released, and the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources is seeking the views of the public on it. The consultation period will last until 19 March 2014, before the act will be reviewed and tabled in Parliament. Dr Balakrishnan hopes to have the act passed within the first half of this year.

The act is unique for its application of extraterritoriality; it covers the operations of all Singapore and non-Singapore entities whose activities outside of Singapore contribute to haze pollution in the city-state. Theact would be the first of its kind for Singapore, as Singapore usually only punishes action overseas for severe crimes such as corruption or sex with minors. It will also be the first of its kind in the region and the world, as there is currently no law in the world that allows a country to prosecute commercial entities in other countries for such offences. Currently, the only way to catch entities based overseas is if somebody in the entity's management position comes to Singapore.

The act makes it a criminal offence should an entity engage in conduct or authorizes any conduct that causes or contributes to haze in Singapore. A penalty of up to SG$300,000 can be imposed, and this may be increased up to SG$450,000 if the entity has deliberately ignored requests by authorities to take appropriate action to prevent, reduce or control the pollution. An individual company officer can also be held personally responsible.

Indonesia's Moratorium on Deforestation

First published in The Forests for the Palms on 25 July 2013.

In May this year, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono released Presidential Instruction No. 6/2013, instructing for a two-year extension to a ban on clearing 158 hectares of primary rainforests and peatland. This extends the original two-year moratorium on deforestation that was declared in May 2011 (Presidential Instruction No. 10/2011) under a US$1 billion deal with Norway to incentivize forest protection in Indonesia as part of the UN-REDD Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries. The ban preserves about fifty per cent of Indonesia's primary forests in an attempt to reduce the country's carbon emissions, up to eighty-five per cent of which have been traced to the clearing and draining of carbon-rich peatland, mostly related to plantation development. This agreement was to “pause” business-as-usual development to allow time for the government to establish a degraded-land database to provide the necessary information to identify areas of land acceptable for the establishment of economic activity, especially oil palm plantations.

The Indonesian palm oil industry has long opposed this moratorium. The Association of Indonesian Palm Oil Producers (GAPKI) lamented that producers stand to lose more than gain from the moratorium. Palm oil producers have pointed out contradictions between the moratorium and the governmental goals for continued expansion of the sector to reach a crude palm oil output of forty million tonnes per year by 2020. They have argued that for these goals to be achieved, companies “had no choice” but to continue establishing plantations on restricted areas. However, despite the stringent opposition from the palm oil lobby, the president went ahead with this second two-year moratorium.

While this can be taken as a positive sign of Indonesia's commitment to reducing deforestation and carbon emissions, environmentalists have identified several inherent weaknesses in the moratorium that remain unchanged in this second ban. First, this “Presidential Instruction” is a non-legislative document, meaning there are no legal consequences if the moratorium is not implemented. Hence, the instruction has not been able to stop permits from being issued at the local level.

The Southeast Asian transboundary haze has resulted in severe environmental, health, political and economic impacts in the region since the 1970s, and has resurfaced time and again in the past decades. During the episodes of 1997, 2013 and 2015, forest fires and haze brought damage on the scale of tens of billions of dollars to the affected countries—Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia itself, and even to the rest of the world—through carbon emissions and climate change. Mainly the result of agricultural slash-and-burn practices on peatland in Indonesia, the pollution problem remains largely intractable and complex despite repeated efforts to mitigate it. Resolving this cross-border issue is critical, and yet is more insurmountable than it appears.

It fundamentally is a classic problem of public good and common property, where everyone owns the commons that is the atmosphere and yet no one is compelled to be fully responsible for it. Standard economic tools such as Pigouvian taxes or a simple Coasian solution cannot be applied. Indonesia can be pressured but not forced to reduce this pollution. The problem is complex to address, primarily because of its transboundary nature, which has made it difficult to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction without infringing on the sovereignty of the culprit nation. For Indonesia, the processes of enacting land use statutes, changing regulatory institutions and enforcing laws are complex and tedious. Plantation owners often deny using fire to clear land and blame shifting cultivators for starting fires in their smallholdings that later spread to plantations. Proof of negligence must be shown, which is susceptible to delays and transaction costs. Moreover, related to the enforcement problems is the complicated nature of Indonesia's decentralized governance system. The coordination of responsibilities for forest fires and haze is spread unevenly across many central and local agencies, with many overlaps.

It is important for all affected countries to undertake the valuation of negative impact costs of the haze such that a form similar to international aid can be offered to Indonesia and assistance provided to targeted sectors hurt by the haze. One approach could be to spend a sum not exceeding the costs of the haze to enhance the ability of Indonesian authorities to detect, locate and respond to the fires, as well as strengthen their ability to prosecute those responsible.

Our Palm Oil Conundrum

First published in Diplomatic Voice, Volume 1 2017.

The latitude and tropical weather of Malaysia create the ideal conditions for the oil palm tree to flourish. The country is currently the world's secondlargest producer of this “golden crop”. Malaysia held the pole position until 2008, when Indonesia became the world's biggest producer, a position it still proudly holds today. Combined, Indonesia and Malaysia produce more than eighty per cent of the world's palm oil.

Palm oil is one of the most important type of oils, or fats, available in the world today. Its use is ubiquitous; palm oil is not only a common ingredient in foodstuffs but it is also widely used in the cosmetics industry and in cleaning products. It is also increasingly used as a biofuel.

The demand for this “green gold” has kept prices high on the commodity markets and has been credited with bringing about national development and improving standards of living across the board in producing countries. As the world population continues to increase, the demand for oils and fats is expected to continue to rise.

The oil palm is one of the most efficient oil crops for oils and fats. A relatively large amount of palm oil can be produced from quite a small area of land. For the same quantity, soya bean oil production would require almost ten times the land area. This means less land is exploited to produce a target amount of palm oil compared to any other vegetable oil.

Palm oil, unfortunately, has been linked to several environmentally unsustainable practices. These include deforestation, fires and hazepollution, habitat loss for endangered animals, and reduced biodiversity as a result of mono-cropping. Furthermore, some palm oil plantations have faced allegations of land grabs and human rights violations. The “healthiness” of palm oil for consumption had also been an issue in the past, but this has largely been debunked—palm oil's safety for consumption is no different than other widely available vegetable oils in the market.

Because of such perceived issues, there have been various campaigns in developed countries, especially in Europe and Australia, seeking to discourage consumers from buying products containing palm oil. These campaigns have been relatively successful, and some products have met with commercial success simply by promoting the fact they do not use palm oil.

“Wicked problems” are problems that are complex, multidimensional, hard to solve and often harder to define (Rittel and Webber 1973). Contrasted against “tame problems” with straightforward solutions, wicked problems are dynamic, encompassing many issues and stakeholders, and evade straightforward, lasting solutions (Howes and Wyrwoll 2012).

Howes and Wyrwoll have argued that many of Asia's environmental problems are wicked in nature; a result of Asia's upward growth rate and one that will only worsen as Asia continues to grow. While growth will help make more resources available to direct at these problems, without effective environmental management, growth will simply “heighten the divergence across many facets of economic activity between private and social costs” (Howes and Wyrwoll 2012).

One such problem that they identify is transboundary haze. This problem has many sources (local incentives, institutional incapacity, decentralization, foreign demand of palm oil, and timber exports), which blurs problem formation: Is the central problem air pollution, sustainable resource use, biodiversity, or climate change? The impact of haze is distributed regionally (health costs from air pollution, atmospheric brown clouds) and globally (climate change), making the problem a highly interdependent one. The solution set is also particularly complex, as many potential solutions require another set of supporting solutions.

The wickedness of this problem is such that the effectiveness (or not) of haze governance at the regional level is interdependent on various other stakeholders and levels of governance, including political and businesselites, local agencies, smallholder villagers, multinational supply chains and even financing institutions.

Indeed, Indonesia has identified the strategic management of its carbonrich peatlands as the cornerstone of its Nationally Determined Contributions presented to the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties 25 in 2019. But as Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia continue to develop, the trade-off between the social costs of clean air, the global costs of the climate and the private costs of profit and development become harder to reconcile.

The challenges to achieving a viable solution set to this problem are compounded by there being much that remains unknown at the ground level.

Environmental activism is a recent phenomenon in Vietnam and, considering the authoritarian nature of the regime, it is still uncertain whether sustained environmental movements might yet emerge. A movement is here defined according to Tarrow (1994, p. 6) as “people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities”, which distinguishes it from discrete instances of activism that do not challenge authority. This is the case in Vietnam, where campaigns are highly fragmented and generally do not last very long or have a deeper impact on the overall society. In order to thwart independent political association, the government has at first sought to engineer its own environmental movement with mass organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) controlled by the government. This, however, has not been successful as the government and business interests are closely tied together. As such, the government has tolerated more independent activism in the form of NGOs, but they are not only required to register with the government but the institutional context forces them to remain small with insufficient financial resources. Moreover, rather than promoting grassroots environmental activism, they focus mostly on service delivery and policy advice. Even the formation of networks has not resolved this problem and may have instead reinforced it. Nevertheless, the government has encouraged environmental activism. There has been a rise in protests against serious pollution, which have generally been tolerated. The government-owned media has reported extensively about them. However, this changed in 2016 when the government heavily repressed nationwide protests in response to massive fish deaths caused by the Taiwanese-owned Formosa Ha Tinh Steel plant. The government's response to this protest movement reveals that, despite recent progress, a widespread environmental movement is unlikely to emerge.

This chapter will explore the progress and challenges of Vietnam's environmental activism. In the context of potential repression and deep fragmentation, traces of environmental movements can be found, but there are severe restrictions under the authoritarian one-party state. By examining the opportunities and obstacles of the various actors in this field, it is possible to map the changing situation in Vietnam and draw attention to both the opportunities and obstacles on the path toward a broad-based environmental movement. First, the chapter seeks to demonstrate that the Vietnamese government has effectively weakened the organizational basis of society for any sustained environmental movement to emerge.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, Hong Kong was considered one of Asia's little dragons. Rapid industrialization in the post-World War II era has led to the worsening of the environment in the city. Subsequently, nascent environmental movements rose up to address the issues of air, water, and soil pollution. However, the opening up of China in 1978 led to the de-industrialization of Hong Kong. Over the course of a decade, almost all the polluting factories moved across the border to the Pearl River Delta. In the 1990s, Hong Kong was further transformed from an industrial city to a global centre of finance, trade, and business services. With the growth of its service industry, the issues addressed by Hong Kong's environmental movements also changed to reflect the post-materialistic concerns of the new middle class, such as lifestyle and cultural preservation.

The political context changed dramatically towards the end of the twentieth century. After Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China in 1997, the city experienced two phases of national integration with the Mainland. In the first phase (1997–2002), Beijing did not intervene in Hong Kong's affairs, and thus the city's economy, society, politics, and environmental movements remained largely the same as before. During this phase, environmental issues did not arouse great debate or controversy in civil society. The major environmental organizations were, as in the past, absorbed into the formal political structure to advocate piecemeal policy change through consensual environmental campaigns and an institutionalization similar to the process described by Heijden (1997). Before 2003, Hong Kong's environmental movements may be considered as more or less managerial.

However, in the second phase (2003–present), Beijing intervened in Hong Kong to speed up the national integration process. In response to the re-scaling exercises and the mega infrastructure projects, environmental protests began to take place over a number of preservation, conservation, and anti-development issues. The demolition of heritage sites in 2006–7 sparked opposition from a new generation of activists who mobilized protests against a variety of developmental projects.