ASEAN vows swift action on choking haze

ASEAN vows swift action on choking haze

Mynardo Macaraig, Agence France-Presse/Manila

Southeast Asian environment ministers on Tuesday promised swift action to help each other with the region's recurrent problem of choking haze from forest fires and with other threats to biodiversity.

"We stand ready to assist each other by mobilizing our resources to mitigate fires in the region during critical periods," the ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) said in a statement after meeting in the Philippine capital.

The ministers "resolved to further intensify regional cooperation" by stepping up previous measures such as joint emergency response, simulation exercises, inventory of fire- fighting resources and guidelines for "zero burning and controlled burning practices."

They said they had established "a panel of ASEAN experts on fire and haze assessment and coordination to undertake rapid assessment of the situation on the ground during impending critical periods."

This panel would help ease "immediate response and effective mobilization of resources in the region," the communique said. It did not identify the members of the panel.

Regional cooperation would be further enhanced at ASEAN meetings on the haze in Indonesia in December, the ministers added.

The ministers also said they would call on ASEAN leaders to provide guidance on the issue during their summit in Malaysia in December.

The haze -- blamed on forest and peat fires and open burning on plantations in Indonesia and parts of Malaysia -- again enveloped both countries and the south of Thailand this year.

All three countries are members of ASEAN along with Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. Malaysian deputy environment minister S. Sothinathan said earlier that pollution remains a regional concern, noting that his government had been forced to declare a state of emergency in August.

He remarked that remedial measures to deal with the haze go into effect "only after the fire has started."

"What we would like to see is (measures) to prevent this from happening," he said.

Malaysia and Singapore have called for a more coordinated response from ASEAN to the annual haze problem, which in 1997-98 cost the region some US$9 billion by disrupting air travel, tourism and other businesses.

Malaysia has been worst hit by the smoke and dust, which in August sent air pollution to extremely hazardous levels and forced schools and an airport to close.

At the summit, the ministers also launched a new autonomous ASEAN Center for Biodiversity that is being supported by both the ASEAN and the European Union.

The center, based in La Union town just south of Manila, will receive six million euros (US$7.2 million) in funding from the European Union over the next three years with 1.3 million euros in counterpart funding from ASEAN, said officials of the ASEAN secretariat.

It is hoped that the center will eventually become an independent research center on the lines of the International Rice Research Institute, the secretariat said.