The ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution: Prospects for Compliance and Effectiveness in Post-Suharto Indonesia
![handle is hein.journals/nyuev13 and id is 655 raw text is: THE ASEAN AGREEMENT ON
TRANSBOUNDARY HAZE POLLUTION:
PROSPECTS FOR COMPLIANCE AND
EFFECTIVENESS IN POST-SUHARTO
INDONESIA*
ALAN KHEE-JIN TANt
I. OVERVIEW
The problem of large-scale forest and land fires is a serious
ecological and health issue in many parts of the world today.' In
recent years, the problem has become especially acute in Southeast
Asia. The deliberate use of fire to clear forests and land,
particularly in Indonesia, has led to periodic fires and smoke
pollution episodes in the region, most disastrously in 1997-98.2
The severe consequences of the fires and haze (as the smoke pall
is euphemistically referred to in the region) recently compelled the
ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) to conclude a landmark regional Agreement on
Transboundary Haze Pollution (the Agreement) to deal with the
* [Editor's Note: Due to the subject matter of this article, several of the
citations herein were difficult or impossible to find in English. For this
reason, the editorial staff of the New York University Environmental Law
Journal was unable to complete a customary check on the references used to
support some of the assertions made in this article. The Author has vouched
for the accuracy of all of the citations and translations.]
t LLB, National University of Singapore, LLM, JSD, Yale, Associate Professor,
Asia Pacific Center for Environmental Law (APCEL) and Faculty of Law,
National University of Singapore. The law and developments are stated as at
February 2005. This Article is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the
Indian Ocean tsunami.
' See generally Nicholas A. Robinson, Forest Fires as a Common
International Concern: Precedents for the Progressive Development of
International Environmental Law, 18 PACE ENVTL. L. REv. 459 (2001).
2 The fires have been regular occurrences in Indonesia for decades, with the
1997-98 fires being the worst by far. Since then, major fires have broken out
again in 1999, 2002, 2004 and 2005. See Robert Go, Indonesians Pay Heavy
Price for Illegal Fires, STRAITS TIMES (Sing.), June 24, 2004.
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Imaged with Permission from N.Y.U. Environmental Law Journal](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/nyuev13&div=19&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution: Prospects for Compliance and Effectiveness in Post-Suharto Indonesia
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