This article first appeared in The Edge Review

By LUKE HUNT / Kuala Lumpur

Expectations that Southeast Asian governments would find a united and workable approach to dealing with the dreaded haze that annually blankets the region have again been undermined by self interest amid a deal struck by Indonesia and Malaysia to withhold critical information regarding the causes of the fires.

Their agreement to withhold information on the fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has upset Singapore, Thailand and Brunei, all key players in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) charged with ending the annual scourge.

The deal also became known in the wake of the second appearance of the haze this season after Indonesian fires fuelled the worst smog since 1997 in June and July, which closed businesses and schools in Malaysia and Singapore, upset air travel and created enormous hardships for the elderly and people with respiratory diseases.

Documents obtained from the recent ASEAN meetings revealed that Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed to exchange digital-geo-referenced maps capable of pin-pointing when and where the fires were ignited, thus providing solid information on who started them and where.

This would make plantation owners and  other land holders, big companies like Sime Darby and governments more accountable and responsible for their actions on the ground when engaging in burning off and clearing forests. Obviously, it would also provide the authorities with evidence for legal action and prosecutions.

However, sources within ASEAN say Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta have conspired to keep this information out of the public domain, agreeing only to share it among themselves and between the relevant ministries.

One source said this was now the main sticking point, with big Malaysian businesses again receiving favorable treatment from Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur at the expense of millions in the region who are forced to live with the choking smog.

“Singapore has said this does fall short of what it’s been trying to achieve,” he said, adding that Le Luong Minh, the new ASEAN secretary general from Vietnam, is also angered by the deal.

Management of the smog by ASEAN dates back to 1997, when then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad banned journalists from covering the phenomenon when it first emerged and alleged an international conspiracy designed to tarnish the image of his country and its tourism industry.

The Malaysian government also tried to convince the world its monoculture palm oil and rubber plantations should be put on equal footing with forests, because they are trees. Therefore, it would be entitled to financial compensation under international climate change schemes like the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD.

Such spin doctoring helped deflect criticism of regional governments, local companies and palm oil producing groups responsible for the widespread annual burning-off, while shifting the blame onto traditional small-scale farmers who still practice slash and burn agricultural techniques.

In Southeast Asia, there are an estimated 24 million hectares of peat, 70 per cent of which is in Indonesia, mostly in Sumatra, Borneo and West Papua. The deposits can reach depths of up to 20 metres, and when set alight, will burn for months. Because of their depth, peat can continue to burn underground long after heavy rains have extinguished the surface blaze.

In 1997, about 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon is believed to have been released into the atmosphere – enough, according to climate scientists, to accelerate the increase of global carbon dioxide levels. Subsequent costs caused by the smoke neared US$9 billion.

Despite the damage, Jakarta’s has not been willing to sign off on the trans-boundary ASEAN treaty, initially drawn up in 2002 with the approval of all other ASEAN members, to provide a regional response to the fires.

Environmentalists say Jakarta is doing big business a favor, but when the latest haze began to spread in June, Indonesia seemed ready to relent and political deals were done. That was until bureaucrats began pointing their fingers at the latest cozy relationship between Malaysia and Indonesia.

Sources said self interest had resulted in the latest back-pedaling on pronouncements made at an ASEAN environment ministers meeting in Bali last year, when the sharing of geo-digital information was put forward and tacit agreements reached.

“Greater transparency is required to make plantation companies and land owners responsible for the haze, more accountable, and employing best management practices in land clearing activities as well as to undertake concerted effort in fire suppression,” ASEAN said in a statement at the time.

It was also agreed to “undertake more deterrent and effective enforcement measures against offenders,” but one bureaucrat has since described politicking over the haze as “ping pong between ministries,” while ASEAN sources said Minh argued that monitoring needed to be authoritative in order to act as a “strong deterrent against irresponsible behavior.”

As result of the efforts by Malaysian and Indonesian authorities to stop information from digital-geo-referenced maps from entering the public domain, the Haze Monitoring System due to be signed off by ASEAN next month now appears unlikely, because Indonesia won’t ratify the ASEAN haze trans-boundary treaty.

At the current burning-off rate, scientists have forecast that peat deposits, a necessity for the sustainability of rainforests, could be wiped out by 2040. ASEAN’s inability to deal with this issue is providing the group with yet another unwanted litmus test of its ability to function as a real and effective political bloc.