Transboundary haze pollution remains a major environmental issue for Southeast Asia. After a decline in forest and peat fires last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the region has seen a resurgence of intense, smoky fires, exacerbated by a dry El Niño season. Air quality has deteriorated significantly across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been working together to address this issue for decades, but without success. In 2002, the 10 ASEAN member states signed the legally binding Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATHP) to strengthen regional cooperation to prevent, monitor and mitigate land and forest fires, the main source of transboundary haze pollution.
However, the success of regional cooperation depends heavily on Indonesia, the region's largest haze producer and the last to ratify the AATHP, in 2014. Forest and land fires in Indonesia, particularly in Sumatra and Kalimantan, are widely considered to be the largest source of transboundary haze pollution in Southeast Asia.
ASEAN’s commitment to non-interference means that the AATHP remains “powerless” and Jakarta has little incentive to change its approach.
The root cause of these fires is agricultural expansion, particularly due to increasing demand for palm oil. Strong political influence and vested interests in the sector, which generates 4.5% of Indonesia's GDP, are one of the main obstacles to Indonesia's involvement in regional cooperation to combat the haze. Moreover, ASEAN's promise of non-interference means that the AATHP remains “powerless”, giving Jakarta little incentive to change its approach.
The limitations of the AATHP are well known. However, there is little discussion about why Indonesia ratified the agreement 12 years after it came into force. I argue that this shift is due to the lack of initiative shown by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004-2014) during his tenure in office.
In Indonesia, the president has great power to shape the foreign policy agenda and pursue his own preferences through presidential decrees and directives. Yudhoyono strongly supported ASEAN as the “cornerstone” of Indonesian foreign policy. The AATHP should have given Yudhoyono an opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to regional cooperation. However, this view did not receive support at home. The AATHP faced resistance in parliament, which became a rallying point for nationalist rhetoric. Pressure on Yudhoyono was amplified by his weak political position. His coalition did not control a majority of seats in parliament, so he had to constantly accommodate various interests to maintain his ruling coalition.
The root cause of forest fires in Indonesia is the expansion of agriculture, especially due to the increasing demand for palm oil. Photo: Palm oil plantation in West Kalimantan (Nanang Sujana/CIFOR/Flickr)
Instead of using his own institutional power and resources to overcome these competing interests, President Yudhoyono did little to promote ratification of the AATHP during his first few years in office.
That changed during President Yudhoyono's second term: Driven by a desire to improve Indonesia's international reputation, he sought to portray Indonesia as a “guardian of the environment”, hiring capable leaders with environmental commitments and putting forests and deforestation at the center of this vision.
The shift was not easy. The president continued to support ambitious economic development goals that conflicted with his environmental policies. For example, the 2011 Indonesia Master Plan for Accelerating and Expanding Economic Development (MP3EI) included converting forest land to generate profits and tax revenues. But there was also a new push to step up efforts to tackle the haze problem. Growing domestic awareness of the role of big corporations in the near-annual haze crisis increased pressure on the government to better regulate palm oil cultivation. Singapore's Transboundary Haze Pollution Act, enacted to prohibit entities both in and outside Singapore from carrying out activities that cause transboundary haze, further pressured the Indonesian government to address the issue.
The President used this opportunity to take a bolder stance to address shortcomings in Indonesia's forest management and conservation.
The President used this opportunity to take a bolder stance to address shortcomings in Indonesia's forest management and conservation. For example, he imposed a moratorium on new logging permits and called for a semi-annual review of its implementation. Through Presidential Decree No. 16/2011, President Yudhoyono significantly improved the legal framework for natural resource management by explicitly defining the roles and powers of the various government agencies involved in suppressing land and forest fires. New monitoring measures and reporting standards for ministries and local officials further strengthened government accountability. For example, the Geospatial Intelligence Agency now reports directly to the President and has worked to consolidate data from various ministries into one map.
No longer tied to a political base, Yudhoyono was able to challenge vested interests and overcome domestic resistance to stronger forest management and law enforcement. In the 2009 elections, Yudhoyono's Democratic Party became the single largest party, winning nearly three times as many votes as it had in 2004. Because the Indonesian constitution limited Yudhoyono to two five-year terms, he did not have to worry about re-election and instead prioritized building his record as a statesman and advocate for multilateralism.
So when another haze crisis hit the region in 2013, the president finally used his institutional powers to rally support for a bill in support of the AATHP in Congress. The House of Representatives unanimously ratified the agreement on September 16, 2014, making Indonesia the last country to join the agreement.
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