Image: Large swaths of Southeast Asia are shrouded in a thick toxic haze from fires burning in Indonesia, which is facing its worst wildfire season in over a decade.
In an article for East Asia Forum, Helena Varkkey asserts that ASEAN needs stronger mechanisms, including greater delegation, enforcement and dispute resolution. Reframing inaction as facilitating harm and enforcement as a mutual obligation could create the diplomatic space for reform in order to avoid missing another “haze-free” deadline.
Transboundary haze has been a recurring problem in Southeast Asia since at least the 1980s. Yet addressing the harm to neighbouring economies, the environment and public health remains a challenge in regional diplomacy.
Though ASEAN has brokered various regional mechanisms to coordinate haze mitigation, transboundary haze remains an almost annual occurrence in Southeast Asia. And in 2026, it seems worse than ever.
Haze-producing fires are often a knock-on effect of draining and drying out peatlands for palm oil and pulpwood plantations in Indonesia, and to a lesser extent, Malaysia. Some of these companies are foreign joint ventures, making haze a truly regional problem in more ways than one.
Under ASEAN haze frameworks, member states commit to prevention, monitoring and emergency response activities to combat haze. The 2002 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATHP) is supported by mechanisms like the ASEAN Standard Operating Procedure for Monitoring, Assessment and Joint Emergency Response, two ASEAN Haze-Free Roadmaps and various peatland-focused programs. The ASEAN Secretariat supports member states through forecasting, information sharing and coordination.
While these efforts are sound on paper, decades of ASEAN cooperation have not conclusively resolved transboundary haze. The first ASEAN Haze-Free Roadmap declared the goal of a ‘Transboundary Haze-Free ASEAN by 2020’. When 2020 came and went, ASEAN launched a second roadmap, this time aiming for a ‘Haze-Free ASEAN by 2030’. These missed deadlines raise doubts over ASEAN’s capacity to manage transboundary issues.
