Clearing the Air Between Neighbours: Can a Joint Haze Task Force Finally Follow the Money?
For anyone who has lived in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or Pekanbaru through a bad dry season, the haze is not an abstract policy file. It is the smell of burnt peat drifting through an open window, the run on N95 masks, the school sports day moved indoors. This year has been one of the worst in a decade. Fires across Sumatra and Kalimantan, fed by a strong El Nino that dried out forests and peatlands, have turned skies orange across three countries.
Against that backdrop, the foreign ministers of Singapore and Indonesia met in Jakarta on Tuesday and agreed to work towards a joint task force on haze. The idea is simple on paper: share information quickly, collect evidence that crosses the border, and, potentially, go after the assets of companies linked to the fires.
Why the money question matters
That last point is the one worth watching. For years the regional conversation about haze has focused on firefighting, weather forecasts and air quality readings. Those matter, but they treat the smoke as a natural disaster rather than a business outcome. Much of the burning is tied to land clearing for plantations, and the firms that benefit are often financed, headquartered or listed outside the country where the fire starts.
Singapore already has a law that allows it to pursue companies whose actions abroad cause haze at home, but enforcement has been difficult because the evidence sits on Indonesian soil. A task force that lets investigators share maps, concession records and satellite data could close part of that gap. Asset recovery, if it becomes real, would change the arithmetic for anyone tempted to clear land with fire.
A relationship under strain
The meeting did not happen in a calm moment. Relations between the two neighbours have been prickly for weeks, and Indonesia’s energy minister recently pushed back hard at Singaporean comments about a bilateral gas supply contract, describing them as a lecture. Haze has a way of turning into a sovereignty question: Jakarta does not like being told how to manage its own forests, while Singaporeans understandably want to breathe.
Seen that way, a joint body is as much a diplomatic tool as an environmental one. It gives both governments a structured channel to talk about something painful without trading accusations in public. It also lets Indonesia show that it is taking the fires seriously at a time when its own citizens are suffering most. In parts of Borneo, authorities have set up nearly 500 facilities offering free oxygen and treatment, including a converted bus that serves as a mobile clean-air shelter.
What would make it work
Task forces are easy to announce and hard to make useful. Three things will decide whether this one matters. First, speed: data on hotspots and concessions is only useful if it is shared while fires are still burning. Second, transparency: publishing which concessions keep catching fire would put pressure on companies and their buyers in a way that quiet diplomacy cannot. Third, follow-through in court: one or two successful cases against well-connected firms would send a stronger signal than any communique.
There is also a regional dimension. ASEAN signed an agreement on transboundary haze back in 2002, yet the smoke keeps coming. A working bilateral model between Indonesia and Singapore could become a template that Malaysia and others join, turning a long-standing agreement into something with practical teeth.
For now, Singapore’s air has improved, helped by showers over Sumatra and Kalimantan. But the next El Nino year will come. The real test of Tuesday’s handshake is whether, when it does, the people responsible for the fires feel the heat as much as the people breathing the smoke.