Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim urges Asean to review its transboundary haze mechanisms to protect public health and hold responsible parties accountable.
PUTRAJAYA: ASEAN needs to review the existing mechanisms in dealing with the issue of transboundary haze to avoid adverse impacts on the people’s health, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
He said ASEAN ministers need to pay serious attention to the matter as the haze can have a direct impact on the health and lives of the people, especially children and babies.
“There is room for improvement. I think the ASEAN ministers must seriously look at it, because this is affecting lives, particularly of children, and babies, and if we have seen in Serian (it) is really concerning,” he said.
Anwar, who is also the Minister of Finance, said this to the media after attending a Meeting with the staff of the Ministry of Plantations and Commodities here today.
Air quality in Serian was reported to have returned to hazardous levels when the monitoring station at the district police headquarters (IPD) in the area recorded an Air Pollutant Index (API) reading of 302 this morning.
Last Friday, His Majesty, Sultan Ibrahim, King of Malaysia declared a haze emergency in the entire Serian division following air pollution that was hazardous to public health, before the declaration was lifted yesterday.
The Prime Minister stressed that the issue of open burning in Indonesia needs to be thoroughly investigated, including identifying the real cause of the fire before any action or accusations are made against any party.
Asked if there are Malaysian companies operating in the republic that have committed wrongdoings that have contributed to the haze issue, Anwar said the country respects any legal action by the Indonesian authorities.
“If there are Malaysian companies that are affected (involved), we will give Indonesia space to take action. We will certainly respect the actions there and we will not defend (them),” he said.
He stressed that Malaysia will not intervene or protect any company if investigations prove they are responsible for open burning or other violations of the law in neighbouring countries.
The ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) had warned that the region’s transboundary haze crisis has become a human rights emergency, one that ASEAN and its member states must address with urgency.
It urges ASEAN and its member states to treat the worsening transboundary haze problem as a human rights emergency, and to use the upcoming Conference of the Parties to the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution in Da Nang, Vietnam, this October to close the enforcement gap that has left the region breathing toxic air for nearly three decades.
Among others, APHR also urged ASEAN and member states to develop a regional legal framework to hold corporate entities accountable for forest fires due to peatland drainage, and commodity-driven deforestation and agricultural residue burning.
It also urged mandating all plantation companies with concession areas in flammable landscapes including peatland or forestland to publicly disclose and publish concession maps to be shared across all ASEAN member states to improve transparency in their supply chains.
Other than that, APHR urged the ASEAN member countries to regulate traceability requirements at every step of the supply chain of agribusiness and food industry to identify the origin of commodities and mitigate risks of deforestation, crop residue burning and transboundary haze at the source.
Lastly, it said the bloc should agree on a standardised air quality indicator to be used in all ASEAN member states to monitor and track air pollution based on a common methodology and act accordingly.
