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View all search resultsMalaysia must not breathe Indonesia’s governance failure
Southeast Asia's skies aren't choking simply on bad weather; they’re choking on decades of Jakarta’s governance failure.
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Haze from forest fires in Kalimantan, Indonesia blankets Papar district, in Sabah, Malaysia. (The Star/ANN/-)
F
or Malaysians in Sarawak and Sabah, the haze is far from an abstract environmental concern. It is the air filling their lungs, shuttered schools, stalled businesses, grounded flights and an unearned public-health crisis. Once again, Malaysia is choking on smoke drifting across the border from Indonesia.
As of Sept. 1, Sarawak faces some of its most hazardous air quality in years, with six areas recording dangerous pollution levels. Kuching’s Air Pollutant Index (API) has surged past 400, while nearby Serian peaked at a staggering 475 on Aug. 31.
None of this is new, and that is precisely the problem.
Indonesia understandably points to a punishing climate. Current El Niño conditions bring extreme heat and drought across Southeast Asia, drying out peatlands and accelerating the spread of blazes. The ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre has already warned that below-average rainfall coupled with prevailing winds significantly elevates transboundary haze risks.
Yet climate conditions cannot serve as an indefinite excuse for governance failures.
This is not an unfamiliar disaster, which this year has reached Manila. Indonesia has navigated forest and peatland fires for decades. Its authorities know the high-risk terrain, identify vulnerable concessions, understand how winds carry Kalimantan’s smoke into Sarawak and recognize that open burning during dry spells inevitably spirals out of control.
Indonesia already possesses the necessary framework: legislation, environmental bodies, satellite monitoring, aerial firefighting fleets and law enforcement. The real issue is not an absence of effort—authorities have deployed thousands of personnel, initiated water-bombing and cloud-seeding runs, investigated 19 companies across 42 high-risk concessions and arrested individuals for illegal burning.
