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Singapore's skyline shrouded in haze caused by fires in Indonesia, 18 October 2026 (Yuichi Yamazaki/AFP via Getty Images)
ASEAN’s haze treaty looks toothless, but the real fault is a rule that leaves the call to whichever nation is burning.
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Southeast Asia: Who gets to call haze a disaster?Southeast Asia: Who gets to call haze a disaster?
Haze again blankets Southeast Asia. Indonesia is fighting this year’s fires as a disaster and reporting them to ASEAN as an environmental problem. President Prabowo Subianto told the national disaster agency BNPB to step up firefighting (Opens in new window), and Central (Opens in new window) and West Kalimantan (Opens in new window) declared emergencies.
Yet after a 12 October cabinet meeting (Opens in new window), coordinating minister Dudung Abdurachman said Jakarta would not declare a national disaster for now. On 15 October Prabowo called the haze a shared environmental crisis and welcomed neighbours’ support (Opens in new window). Back in 2015 while in opposition, Prabowo had urged the fires (Opens in new window) be called a national disaster.
The ASEAN haze treaty is built around a single trigger – an emergency declaration – that only the government where the fires burn can make. A declaration from Jakarta is the only step that would move the same fires from one category to the other, and under the treaty that decision rests with the government where the fires burn.
Because that decision is deeply political, it relies entirely on how the government chooses to measure the crisis. The numbers quoted help decide the argument.
The forestry ministry’s monitoring system recorded 202,004 hectares burned between January and July (Opens in new window), and BNPB counted 72,008 hectares of peatland by early September (Opens in new window). Both sit far below the 2.6 million hectares that burned in 2015 (Opens in new window), a crisis the World Bank put at a cost of $16.1 billion. BNPB’s response figure for six priority provinces on 28 September this year was 527.6 hectares, with 96 still burning (Opens in new window).
Fighting first in Sematang Borang Regency in Palembang, South Sumatra, Indonesia, 17 October 2026. The area affected by wildfires in South Sumatra has become the largest in Indonesia, with the country recording more than 1.06 million wildfire hotspot detections as of 14 October 2026, surpassing the 885,037 recorded in 2019 (Muhammad Fajri/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
A government measuring what burns today can sincerely say it is coping. Measure what has already burned, or who has been breathing it, and the answer changes. West Kalimantan recorded 62,278 cases of acute respiratory infection between 28 June and 8 September (Opens in new window), and cases across seven provinces more than doubled to 277,075 by 12 October (Opens in new window).
The familiar explanation is that ASEAN is toothless and that its principle of non-interference shields Jakarta. It says little about what is different this year. The more specific problem sits in the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (Opens in new window). Article 5 says the ASEAN Centre works on the basis that the national authority acts first, and that a party which declares an emergency situation may then ask the Centre for help. Yet as researchers at Indonesia at Melbourne (Opens in new window) have observed, the Centre cannot decide when an emergency exists. The treaty therefore starts the regional response with the government that carries the political cost of asking for it.
Two complications matter. Whether a provincial governor’s declaration satisfies a clause written for a national authority is a question I could not find anyone answering. The Centre was still being set up in the spring. In April the environment minister said Indonesia was still preparing a presidential regulation to ratify its agreement (Opens in new window), and I could not confirm whether that has happened since.
Help has followed the same split. Indonesia had, in principle, accepted (Opens in new window) a Malaysian offer last month of one aircraft, three helicopters and 52 personnel to support Indonesia’s firefighting efforts, on top of assistance from Japan. On 15 October, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Arrmanatha Nasir confirmed the formal approval, saying that BNPB was handling the talks, naming no country (Opens in new window). He also said that reporting to the haze centre continued.
A government measuring what burns today can sincerely say it is coping.
The problem is that reports go to an environment channel while help runs through the disaster agency, on a timetable the neighbours do not control, even though they are suffering the trans-border effect. ASEAN’s summit text sorts haze the same way. In the Chair’s Statement of the 48th ASEAN Summit (Opens in new window), the paragraphs on disaster response (20 to 22 and 130 to 131) never mention haze. Haze appears in paragraph 100 under the environment heading, with a goal of a haze-free ASEAN by 2030. A summary document proves little alone, but it matches Malaysia’s foreign minister, who said ASEAN’s disaster mechanisms do not cover haze (Opens in new window).
Why would Jakarta keep the national disaster label in reserve? Beyond sincere claims of manageable capacity, a key factor is scrutiny. BNPB has said burned peatland includes areas inside concessions as well as on community land (Opens in new window). A national declaration would inevitably invite uncomfortable questions about who holds those permits and whether they are being held accountable. Accountability is meanwhile moving to a Pontianak courtroom, where a class action accuses (Opens in new window) the government of gross negligence.
PHOTO BREAK
The Chair’s Statement already points to a fix. For disasters, leaders endorsed science-based triggers, pre-arranged standby mechanisms and accessible emergency financing (Opens in new window) in paragraph 21. Yet copying that for haze meets two serious limits. Automatic foreign aircraft would breach non-interference in a way that accepting invited help does not. Capacity is the second limit. Malaysia’s offer is small beside the 60,177 personnel Indonesia had deployed by 13 October (Opens in new window), so neighbours cannot put out these fires alone.
A workable rule would be to start a clock instead. When ASEAN’s meteorological centre, which already reports on haze conditions (Opens in new window), shows readings above an agreed level, offers would be pre-registered and Jakarta would owe a reply within days. The same trigger would release regional money and early support for prevention and monitoring.
The parties to the haze agreement are due to meet in Vietnam later this month, and ASEAN foreign ministers will take up the haze in November (Opens in new window) before the leaders’ summit in the Philippines. Watch the next Chair’s Statement for one specific placement: whether ASEAN continues to categorise the haze as a slow-moving environmental goal, or finally recognises it as a cross-border disaster demanding a regional response.
About the author
Vania Trixie Widodo
Vania Trixie Widodo is an Indonesian international researcher specialising in space security and governance, as well as global security affairs.
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