Indonesia is working on options to reduce the amount of transboundary haze that could affect Singapore, according to Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.
Representatives of five ASEAN member states - Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand - plan to gather in Singapore from June 7-8 to discuss transboundary haze.
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha chaired a teleconference with his Lao counterpart Sonexay Siphandone and Myanmar Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services Min Aung Hlaing on April 7 to tackle the region’s transboundary haze problem.
Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Kao Kim Hourn has pledged to support efforts to combat transboundary haze pollution in the region.
Parts of the upper northern and northeastern areas of Thailand remained cloaked in hazardous levels of smoke haze on March 28 with the worst pollution still in Chiang Rai's Mae Sai district.
Representatives from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have reaffirmed their commitment towards the full and effective implementation of the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the agreement (COP-17), which was held on October 20 in Singapore.
The ASEAN Secretariat has hosted an online conference to strengthen efforts, coordination and preparation for tackling transboundary haze pollution, which is predicted to peak in August and September.
Indonesia has started cloud seeding to induce rain as the archipelago moves to head off annual forest fires blamed for blanketing swathes of Southeast Asia in toxic haze.
Thailand is planning to seek cooperation from Myanmar and Laos to support the fight against haze and smog pollution amidst many forest fires detected in its northern and northeastern mountainous areas.
The total damage and economic losses from forest fires in Indonesia this year has amounted to at least 5.2 billion USD, equal to 0.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, the World Bank said in a report on December 11.
Singapore is promoting a strategy of environmentally friendly palm oil production, aiming to become a the world's first country to only use sustainable palm oil.
The European Union (EU) has launched the civil society component of a 24 million EUR (about 26 million USD) programme to support Sustainable Use of Peatland and Haze Mitigation in ASEAN (SUPA).
The 15th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on the Environment (AMME15), the 15th ASEAN Meeting on Transboundary Haze Pollution and relevant meetings kicked off in Siem Reap, Cambodia, on October 8.
Indonesian people risk having their life expectancy shaved off by four years on average due to exposure to dangerous particulate matter caused by the haze from forest fires, according to the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on September 30 held an urgent video-conference with leaders of 16 provinces and related ministries after PM2.5 air pollution exceeded the safe level in Bangkok and surrounding provinces.
The number of Indonesians suffering respiratory problems or ISPA caused by smoke from forest and peatland fires blanketing parts of Borneo and Sumatra in the past few months has reached over 919,000, according to Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesman Agus Wibowo.
Hundreds of schools in Malaysia have been forced to close due to poor air quality, blamed on smoke drifting in from forest fires in neighbouring Indonesia.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on September 17 that about 5,600 additional military personnel have been deployed to help 9,000 people currently fighting bush fires which have razed more than 328,700 hectares of land nationwide.
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