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Aidan Jones

Iman Muttaqin Yusof

Kolette Lim

Ushar Daniele

Dr Asma Zafirah doesn’t need satellite images to know when Kalimantan is burning. She sees it in the watery eyes and laboured breaths of the patients at her clinic in Sarawak, and the children who are kept home from school to protect them from the toxic air.
Southeast Asia’s transboundary haze crisis was meant to have been brought under control six years ago.
But Borneo is once again belching out dangerous emissions, as fires in the peatlands and forests of Kalimantan – Indonesia’s section of the island – send a wall of pollutants across Malaysia’s Sarawak and on to the wider region.
Repeated, prolonged exposure to haze wreaks havoc in the human body, triggering inflammation, asthma attacks and other respiratory problems.
“That is already a signal that their body is not simply being irritated,” Asma said. “It is having a clinically significant response to the exposure.”
Left unchecked, that exposure can scar lungs, cause cardiovascular illness and lead to cancer, as PM2.5 particles small enough to cross into the bloodstream spread the damage far and wide.

In Sarawak, the Air Pollutant Index (API) Malaysia uses climbed as high as 519 this week, surpassing a level so hazardous it triggered a state of emergency in the Bornean state’s Serian district that was lifted only once the air was clear enough to breathe.
Singapore, which had gone three years without air quality breaching unhealthy levels, restarted daily haze alerts and in the Philippine capital, more than 2,000km (1,240 miles) from the wildfires, schools were forced to shut their doors.
Climate experts warn of a meteorological double-whammy conspiring to make this the hottest year on record for Southeast Asia. “Super El Nino” – a massive warming of the Pacific Ocean that chokes off regional rainfall – is being stacked on top of a developing positive Indian Ocean Dipole, which cools regional waters, further cutting off moisture.
Together, they act as a force multiplier, fuelling droughts, heatwaves and wildfires from Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra to the Mekong nations of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
Extreme weather is only part of the story, however. The fuel for the fires is the land cleared, year after year, for palm oil, pulpwood, corn and sugar cane, on plantations that drain water from the region’s peatlands until they become as dry as tinder.
It’s agribusiness vs the atmosphere, observers say – and for now, agribusiness is winning, despite decades of Asean pledges, a real-time satellite-powered fire-detection system and US$1.5 billion in funding to tackle the crisis that has yet to be raised.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, facing an electorate once again struggling to breathe, called on Tuesday for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to take action. “Asean ministers must seriously look at it”, he told reporters, “because it is affecting lives, particularly of children and babies”.


The crisis is also decimating some of the world’s greatest stores of biodiversity. Pitiful photographs from Kalimantan of rescued pangolins curled into defensive balls and orangutans with their fur singed orange-black have refocused the world’s attention on the issue.
But climate advisers warn against a convenient narrative taking hold: that this is simply the fault of this year’s “super El Nino”, rather than the businesses making billions from the burning.
“El Nino and dry conditions are risk multipliers, not the root cause,” said Renard Siew, a climate change specialist at the Centre for Governance and Political Studies in Kuala Lumpur.
“We cannot govern El Nino away,” he added. “But we can manage land better, prevent fires, enforce regulations and reduce the underlying vulnerability. Climate change is effectively making the consequences of weak governance more severe.”
History repeats
By far Southeast Asia’s worst haze offender is its most populous nation and largest economy.
Indonesia’s peatland fires began alarmingly early this year, with hotspots detected way back in January – months before the typical dry season burn.
More than 202,000 hectares (780 square miles) have burned so far and police have named 138 arson suspects, including eight companies implicated in forest and land clearance.
But arrests are of little comfort to the families forced to live under a cloud of toxic haze.
Lina Rose, a mother of four in Sarawak, has had to keep her children indoors for most of the recent school holidays.
“I’m worried about my child who has asthma,’’ she said. “The sky looks so gloomy that you think it’s going to rain, but then it doesn’t.”

Residents hark back to 2015, when Indonesia’s worst haze crisis in decades – fuelled by the same slash-and-burn clearance for palm oil and pulpwood – released thousands upon thousands of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere and blanketed tens of millions of people, from Sumatra to Singapore, in choking smog for months on end.
Jakarta, faced with international fury, labelled that year’s crisis a “crime against humanity of extraordinary proportions” and belatedly signed on to an Asean road map promising haze-fire skies by 2020.
But that deadline came and went – and still the haze continued. A second road map followed in 2023, with a new target year of 2030. Yet few believe this new framework will be any more effective than the first.
The reason comes down to Asean’s modus operandi: consensus and non-interference are not conducive to policing environmental crime across borders, analysts say.
Meanwhile, the palm oil, pulp and paper conglomerates whose business models depend on cheap land clearance have every incentive to keep enforcement weak.
“The fundamental shift has to be from ‘managing haze’ to preventing the conditions that create it,” Siew said. “That means stronger land-use governance, better fire prevention and peatland management, clearer accountability across supply chains and much greater investment in local capacity.”
To its credit, the newer haze-control road map does “contain something its predecessor lacked”, according to Dominique Nicky Fahrizal, a legal expert and researcher at Indonesia’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies – namely, measurable indicators, “including zero days at the highest alert level for two consecutive years”, as well as pledges to reduce burned area by 10 per cent and hotspots by 5 per cent, with a midterm review due in 2028.

But the mechanisms for holding anyone accountable remain weak.
“The consensus principle and the related ‘Asean Way’ approach have led to the creation of mechanisms that are ambitious but have been described as toothless,” said Helena Varkkey, an associate professor of political ecology at the University of Malaya. “This is because the mechanisms often lack strong operationalisation or punitive measures.”
Sanctions would not work, Fahrizal said, as Asean members would never agree to impose them on one another, adding that the latest road map “is not a binding instrument” with reporting done by member states themselves.
Asean’s consensus-based approach has allowed Jakarta to commit to haze-free targets with no penalty attached to missing them. After 2015, it did impose a moratorium on peatland clearance and created an agency to restore affected areas, eventually rehabilitating some 1.6 million hectares (6,177 square miles).
But Indonesia also produces more than half the world’s palm oil and its industry has found ways to adapt, securing permits for “sustainable” farming on the one hand while surreptitiously clearing protected areas on the other. The peatland restoration agency, for all the good it did, was dissolved last year.
Fahriza said the most “realistic” option for enforcing anti-haze measures was to employ independent, third-party verification of data that could be reviewed collectively to impose “consequences for reputation and access to financing”.
Absent that, Asean’s credibility – and relevance – would “ultimately be judged by the citizens breathing the smoke, not by the number of documents signed”, he said.

Patchwork fixes
Advocacy groups are done waiting for another of the bloc’s road maps to fail.
On Monday, Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights called for the region’s latest haze crisis to be treated as a “human rights emergency”, urging Asean member states to use an October summit in Vietnam to close enforcement gaps and hold corporate offenders to account by forcing companies to publish fire and land-use information for independent scrutiny.
Some smaller-scale bilateral cooperation has also emerged. Thailand and Laos signed a data- and resource-sharing agreement on Wednesday aimed at pre-empting wildfires before they spread, echoing a similar arrangement Bangkok struck with Myanmar last month.
External pressure is building too, with mixed results. The European Union’s threatened ban on palm oil linked to deforestation has been delayed to 2027, after Indonesian objections and Brussel’s own need to lock in a new trade deal amid rising US tariffs.
Then there are the built-in weaknesses in Asean’s own crisis-response tools: under the bloc’s latest haze agreement, accepting emergency firefighting help from abroad remains entirely voluntary.
“At the moment, the arrangement exists, but ultimately it cannot function without the explicit invitation of the host country,” Varkkey said.
“This should be a scientific decision, when the haze is bad enough to warrant external help, not a political one.”

Singapore perhaps best captures the tension between profit and public safety: its companies are heavy investors in Kalimantan’s palm oil sector, yet its people – the region’s wealthiest – no longer tolerate haze imported from beyond their borders.
The city state’s Transboundary Haze Pollution Act 2014 lets it prosecute companies for haze pollution regardless of where the fire was lit, a legal reach that was tested after the 2015 pollution crisis when six companies, including Indonesia’s Asia Pulp & Paper Group, were investigated – a move Jakarta called an affront to its sovereignty.
As of 2021, four of the cases remained open, Singapore’s environment minister told parliament. There has been no public confirmation of their closure in the years since.
Meanwhile, Singapore still wheezes whenever Borneo burns.
Wildlife photographer Eddie Vanderloot, 47, has learned to recognise a tight chest and itchy eyes as unmistakable signs that the air has turned.
“Constantly planning activities around the air quality gets tiring and it’s hard not to feel worn down by it,” he said.
“Even with all the windows closed, a mask on, an air purifier and air conditioners switched on, the haze still affects me for hours.”


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Up in smoke: why Southeast Asia failed to halt the haze

Scenes from across Southeast Asia as dense transboundary haze from widespread forest and peatland fires triggers severe air pollution. Photos: EPA

Firefighters spray water on a wildfire in South Sumatra, Indonesia, on September 5. Photo: EPA

Students walk home along a street in Jambi, Indonesia, after being released from school early due to the haze in September 2015. Photo: Antara Foto/Wahdi Setiawan/Reuters

A ship sails through thick haze in Palembang, South Sumatra, Indonesia, on Wednesday. Photo: Xinhua

Dock workers walk amid thick haze from forest fires at Kijing Port in Mempawah, West Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Thursday. Photo: AP

Haze shrouds Singapore on September 4. The city state’s Transboundary Haze Pollution Act 2014 lets it prosecute companies for haze pollution. Photo: EPA

A woman covers her face as she rides on a road amid the thick haze from forest fires in Mempawah, West Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Thursday. Photo: AP

A firefighter sprays water on a wildfire in South Sumatra, Indonesia, on September 5. Fires across parts of Indonesia are generating toxic haze, affecting air quality and health across the region. Photo: EPA

An Indonesian man wearing a Spider-Man costume helps extinguish a fire at Kereng Bangkirai in Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

Rescuers help an orangutan and her child caught up in wildfires in West Kalimantan province, Indonesia, on Thursday. Photo: AFP

When Indonesia burns, these women run towards the fire

A member of the Power of Mama on night fire patrol at a palm oil plantation in West Kalimantan province, Indonesia, last month. Photo: Garry Lotulung

Irma, a member of the Power of Mama team that heads out every day during the dry season to battle blazes in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan. Photo: Garry Lotulung

Smog from massive forest and land fires blankets a rural area in Tanjungpura village, Ketapang regency, Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province, on August 18. Photo: Garry Lotulung

A Power of Mama volunteer carries a hosepipe to extinguish flames in Ketapang regency, West Kalimantan province, Indonesia, on August 20. Photo: Garry Lotulung

 Suriati (left) and Ratinah, members of the Power of Mama team, rest after conducting a patrol in Sungai Putri village on August 17. Photo: Garry Lotulung

Ely Marlina carries a hosepipe to extinguish fires at night in Sungai Awan Kiri village, Indonesia, on August 17. Photo: Garry Lotulung

As toxic haze spreads, can Indonesia make land burners pay?

A helicopter drops water to extinguish a wildfire burning through peatland in Jambi province, Indonesia, on Monday. Photo: BPBD Jambi/AP

Government buildings shrouded in haze in Putrajaya, Malaysia, on Tuesday. Massive forest and land fires across parts of Indonesia have sent haze towards the neighbouring nation. Photo: EPA

Junior school students wear face masks at a school in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia on Friday, as a result of widespread forest and land fires. Photo: AFP

A haze-shrouded road in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Thursday. Smoke from widespread forest and land fires has significantly reduced visibility and degraded air quality across the province. Photo: AFP

Indonesia opens its skies to Malaysian rainmakers as haze crisis deepens

Firefighters extinguish a peatland fire at Tambang in Indonesia’s Riau province on Tuesday. Photo: Wahyudi/AFP

Tourists look at the skyline of Kuala Lumpur shrouded in haze from Indonesia’s wildfires earlier this month. Photo: Reuters

Up in smoke: why Southeast Asia failed to halt the haze

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Asean was going to eliminate transboundary haze by 2020. What happened?

Asean was going to eliminate transboundary haze by 2020. What happened?