ASEAN urged to ratify haze accord

ASEAN urged to ratify haze accord

SINGAPORE: Indonesia and Singapore have urged fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to speed up ratification of an agreement to fight pollution caused by forest fire haze.

State Minister for the Environment Nabiel Makarim and Singapore Environment Minister Lim Swee Say made the call in a joint statement issued after a meeting here on Tuesday.

"Both ministers agreed that in the light of the return of transboundary haze pollution, there is urgency for ASEAN member states to expedite their national clearance process to ratify and bring the ASEAN Haze Agreement into force as early as possible," they said.

The agreement was signed by all 10 ASEAN members during a meeting in Kuala Lumpur in June, but the accord needs to be ratified by each member state in accordance with its own ratification processes.

Aside from Singapore and Indonesia, ASEAN also groups Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Last month, Singapore said smoke haze from forest fires in Indonesia had pushed the pollution index to its highest reading this year.

Parts of neighboring Malaysia and Brunei have also suffered from the smoke blown from Indonesia this year. Choking haze from Indonesian fires enveloped large parts of Southeast Asia in 1997 and to a lesser extent in 1998, causing an estimated US$9.3 billion in economic losses. --AFP